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Charles Dickens^ Works, 


CAItIjETON» 8 NEW IZJLVSTEATEn EDITION. 


THE PICKWICK PAPERS. 
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TALE OF TWO CITIES. 

CHRISTMAS BOOKS.'^ 
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HARD TIMES, ETC.*^ 
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All published uniform with this volume. Price $1.50 
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New ITork. 


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Mr. Harthouse Dining at the Bounderbys’. — [Page 117.] 


[‘*CAItIjETON>S NEW ILLUSTRATED EDITION.’^] 


Hard Times, 

and 

r 

REPRINTED PIECES. 


\ 

/ 


By CHARLES 


DICKENS. v/ 

1 / 


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. WALKER. 



NEW YORK: 

G. IV. Carleton Gf Co.., Publisher's. 


LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL. 
MDCCCLX.X1V. 



'’^55’ 

W 




X^^-'r' 


a. 1 ' 


I p^\^, 3lS 


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.Stcreotj'pcil at the 

V/ca:kk’s Printing House, John F. Trow & Son, Printers, 

56, 58 & 60 Park St., 205-213 East 12TH St., New York. 

New York. 


CONTENTS OF HARD TIMES. 






BOOK THE FIRST. 


SOWING. 

CHAPTER 

I. — The One Thing Needful 

II. — Murdering the Innocents 

III. — A Loophole 

IV. — Mr. Bounderby 

V. — The Key-note 

VI. — Sleary’s Horsemanship 

VII. — Mrs. Sparsit 

VIII.— Never Wonder 

IX. — Sissy’s Progress 

X. — Stephen Blackpool 

XI. — No Way Out 

XII.— The Old Woman 

XIII. — Rachael 

XIV. — The Great Manufacturer 

XV. — Father and Daughter 

XVI. — Husband and Wife 


PAGE 


9 


lO 

IS 

20 

26 

31 

43 


48 


64 

72 

76 

83 

87 


94 


BOOK THE SECOND. 


REAPING. 

CHAPTER 

I. — Effects in the Bank 

II. — Mr. James Harthouse 

II D— The Whelp 

IV. — Men and Brothers 

V. — Men and Masters 

VI. — Fading Away 

VI I. — Gunpowder 


PAGE 

100 

III 


118 

123 

129 



6 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER 

VIII. — Explosion 

IX. — Hearing the Last of it . 

X. — Mrs. Sparsit’s Staircase 

XI. — Lower and Lower 

XIL- — Down 


157 

168 

175 

179 

1S6 


BOOK THE THIRD. 

GARNERING. 


CHAPTER PAGE | 

I, — Another Thing Needful 191 I 

11. — Very Ridiculous I96 ! 

III. — Very Decided 204 j 

IV. — Lost 212 

V. — Found 220 ' 

VI. — The Starlight 227 

VII. — Whelp-hunting 236 

VI 11. — Philosophical • 246 

IX. — Final 251 


CONTENTS OF REPRINTED PIECES. • 


The Long Voyage 

The Begging-letter Writer 

A Child’s Dream of a Star 

Our English Watering-place 

Our French Watering-place 

Bill- sticking 

“Births. Mrs. Meek, of a Son” 

Lying Awake 

The Poor Relation’s Story 

The Child’s Story 

The Schoolboy’s Story 

Nobody’s Story 

The Ghost of Art 

Out of Town 

Out of the Season 

A Poor Man’s Tale of a Patent, . 

The Noble Savage 

A Flight 

The Detective Police 

Three “ Detective” Anecdotes. . . 
On Duty with Inspector Field. . . . , 

Dcrwn with the Tide 

A Walk in a Workliouse 

Prince Bull. A Fairy Tale 

A Plated Article 

Our Honorable Friend 

Our School. 

Our Vestry 

Our Bore 


PAGE 

259 

268 

275 

277 

286 

298 

309 

313 

■?20 

329 

333 

342 

347 

353 

359 

367 

372 

378 

387 

405 

413 

425 

434 

440 

445 

454 

459 

466 

472 


I 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

— ^ :o: 

HARD TIMES. 

'■ ' rAf.E 

1. Mr. Harthouse dining at the Bounderby’s. 117- 

2. Stephen and Rachael in the Sick-room 81 

3. Mr. .Harthouse and Mr. Bounderby in the Garden 153 

4. Recovered from the Old Hell Shaft 234 

:o: 

REPRINTED PIECES. 

5. The Long Voyage 265 

6. The Schoolboy’s Story 334 

' 7. A Poor Man’s Tale of a Patent 368 

8. A Detective’s Story. — “The Sofa” 412 



HARD TIMES. 


BOOK THE FIRST.— SOWING. 


CHAPTER I. 

The One Thing Needful. 

OW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and 
girls nothing but P'acts. Facts alone are wanted in 
life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything, 
else. You can only form the minds of reasoning ani- 
mals upon facts : nothing else will ever be of any service to 
them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own chil- 
dren, and this the principle on which I bring up these children. 
Stick to Facts, sir ! ” 

The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school- 
room, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasised his ob- 
servations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the 
schoolmaster’s sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the 
speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for 
its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark 
caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by 
the speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The 
emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflex- 
ible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the 
speaker’s hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, 
1 * 



lO 


//AJ^D TIMES. 


a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, 
all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the 
head Jiad scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stowed in- 
side. The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat, square 
legs, square shoulders, — nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take 
him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stub- 
born fact, as it was, — all helped the emphasis. 

“ In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir ; nothing but 
Facts ! ” 

The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown per- 
son present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the 
inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, 
ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until 
they were full to the brim. 


CHAPTER II. 


Murdering the Einocents. 

HOMAS GRADGRIND, sir. A man of realities. A 
man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds 
upon the principle that two and two are four, and 
nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing 
for any thing over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir — peremptorily 
Thomas — Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, 
and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to 
weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you 
exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a 
case of simple arithmetic. You might hope to get some other 
nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augus- 
tus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all sup- 
posititioLis, non-existent persons), but into the head of Thomas 
Gradgrind — no, sir ! 

In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced 
himself, whether to his private circle of acquaintance, or to the 
public in general. In such terms, no doubt, substituting the 
words “boys and girls,” for “sir,” Thomas Gradgrind now pre- 
sented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who 
were to be filled so full of facts. 

Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage be. 



J/A/HD TIMES. 


II 


fore mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the 
muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the 
regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvani- 
sing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute 
for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed 
away. 

“ Girl number twenty,” said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely point- 
ing with his square forefinger, “I don’t know that girl. Who 
is that girl ? ” 

“Sissy Jupe, sir,” explained number twenty, blushing, stand- 
ing up, and curtseying. 

“ Sissy .is not a name,” said Mr. Gradgrind. “ Don’t call 
yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.” 

“It’s father as calls me Sissy, sir,” returned the )'Oung girl 
in a trembling voice, and with another curtse)^ 

“Then he has no business to do it,” said Mr. Gradgrind. 
“Tell him he mustn’t. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is 
your father ? ” 

“ He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir.” 

Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable 
calling with his hand. 

“ We don’t want to know anything about that, here. You 
mustn’t tell us about that, here. Your father breaks horses, 
don’t he ? ” 

“ If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do 
break horses in the ring, sir.” 

“You mustn’t tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then. 
Describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick 
horses, I dare say ? ” 

“ Oh yes, sir.” ' 

“Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and 
horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.” 

(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.) 

“ Girl number twenty unable to define a horse ! ” said Mr. 
Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. 
“ Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one 
of the commonest of animals! Some boy’s definition of a 
horse. Bitzer, yours.” 

The square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly 
on Bitzer, perhaps because he chanced to sit in the same ray 
of sunlight which, darting in at one of the bare windows of the 
intensely whitewashed room, irradiated Sissy. For, the boys 
and girls sat on the face of the inclined plane in two conipact 
bodies, divided up the centre by a narrow interval ; and Sissy, 


12 


//A/^:D TIMES. 


being at the corner of a row on the sunny side, came in for the 
beginning of a sunbeam, of which Bitzer, being in the corner of 
a row on the other side, a few rows in advance, caught the end. 
But, whereas the girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired, that she 
seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous colour from the 
sun, when it shone upon her, the boy was so light-eyed and light- 
haired that the self-same rays appeared to draw out of him what 
little colour he ever possessed. His cold eye would hardly have 
been eyes, but for the short ends of lashes which, by bringing 
them into immediate contrast with something paler than them- 
selves, expressed tlieir form. His short-cropped hair might 
have been a mere continuation of the sandy freckles on his fore- 
head and face. His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in the 
natural tinge, that he looked as though, if he were cut, he would 
bleed white. 

“Bitzer,” said Thomas Gradgrind. “Your definition of a 
horse.” 

“Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty- 
four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat 
in the spring ; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs 
hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks 
in mouth.” Thus (and much more) Bitzer. 

“ Now girl number twenty,” said Mr. Gradgrind. “ You 
know what a horse is.” 

She curlseyed again, and would have blushed deeper, if she 
could have blushed deeper than she had blushed all the time. 
Bitzer, after rapidly blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both 
eyes at once, and so catching the light upon his quivering ends 
of lashes that they looked like the antennae of busy insects, put 
his knuckles to his freckled forehead, and sat down again. 

The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at 
cutting and drying, he was ; a government officer ; in his way 
(and in most other people’s too), a professed pugilist ; always 
in training, always with a system to force down the general throat 
like a bolus, always to be heard at the bar of his little Public- 
office, r,eady to fight all England. To continue in fistic phrase- 
ology, he had a genius for coming up to the scratch, wherever and 
v/hatever it was, and proving himself an ugly customer. He would 
go in and damage any subject whatever with his right, follow up 
with his left, stop, exchange, counter, bore his opponent (he al- 
ways fought All England) to the ropes, and fall upon him neatly. 
He was certain to knock the wind out of common-sense, and 
render that unlucky adversary deaf to the call of time. And 
he had it in charge from high authority to bring about the 


I/ARD TIMES, 


13 

great public-office Millennium, when Commissioners should 
reign upon earth. 

“ Very well,” said this gentleman, briskly smiling, and fold- 
ing his arms. “That’s a horse. Now, let me ask you girls 
and boys. Would you paper a room with representations of 
horses ? ” 

After a pause, one half of the children cried in chorus, “Yes, 
sir!” Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman’s 
face that Yes was wrong, cried out in chorus, “ No sir ! ” — as 
the custom is, in these examinations. 

“ Of course, No. Why wouldn’t you ? ” 

A pause. One corpulent slow boy, with a wheezy manner of 
breathing, ventured the answer. Because he wouldn’t paper a 
room at all, but would paint it. 

“ You must paper it,” said the gentleman, rather warmly. 

“ You must paper it,” said Thomas (yradgrind, “ whether you 
like it or not. Don’t tell us you wouldn’t paper it. What do 
mean, boy ? ” 

“ I’ll explain to you, then,” said the gentleman, after another 
and a dismal pause, “ why you wouldn’t paper a room with re- 
presentations of horses. Do you ever see horses walking up 
and down the sides of rooms in reality — in fact ? Do you ? ” 

“Yes, sir 1” from one half. “ No, sir 1 ” from the other. 

“ Of course no,” said the gentleman, with an indignant look 
at the wrong half. “ Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, 
what you don’t see in fact ; you are not to have anywhere, what 
you don’t have in fact. What is called Taste, is only another 
name for Fact.” 

Thomas Gradgrind nodded his api)robation. 

“ This is a new principal, a discovery, a great discovery,” 
said the gentleman. “Now I’ll try you again. Suppose you 
were going to carpet a room. Would you use a carpet having 
a representation of flowers upon it ?” 

There being a general conviction by this time that “ No, 
sir ! ” was always the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus 
of No was very strong. Only a few feeble stragglers said Yes ; 
among them Sissy Jupe. 

“ Girl number twenty,” said the gentleman, smiling in the 
calm strength of knowledge. 

Sissy blushed, and stood up. 

“ So you would carpet your room — or your husband’s room, 
if you were a grown woman, and had a husband — with repre- 
sentations of flowers, would you,” said the gentleman. “ Why 
would you ? ” 


14 


TIMES, 


“ If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,” returned the 
girl. 

“ And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, 
and have people walking over them with heavy boots ? ” 

“It wouldn’t hurt them, sir. They wouldn’t crush and 
wither, if you please, sir. They would be the pictures of what 
was very pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy — ” 

“Ay, ay, ay ! But you mustn’t fancy,” cried the gentleman, 
quite elated by coming so happily to his point. “ That’s it ! 
You are never to fancy.” 

“ You are not, Cecelia Jupe,” Thomas Gradgrind solemnly 
repeated, “ to do anything of that kind.” 

“ Fact, fact, fact ! ” said the gentleman. And “ Fact, fact, 
fact ! ” repeated Thomas Gradgrind. 

“You are to be in all things regulated and governed,” said 
the gentleman, “ by fact. We hope to have before long, a 
board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force 
the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You 
must discard the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to 
do with it. You are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, 
what would be a contradiction in fact. You don’t walk upon 
flowers in fact ; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers 
in carpets. You don’t find that foreign birds and butterflies 
come and perch upon your crockery ; you cannot be permitted 
to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You 
never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls ; you 
must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls. You must 
use,” said the gentleman, “ for all these purposes, combinations 
and modifications (in primary colours) of mathematical figures 
which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the 
new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.” 

The girl curtseyed and sat down. She was very young, and 
slie looked as if she were frightened by the matter of fact pros- 
])ect the world afforded. 

“Now, if Mr. M‘Choakumchild,” said the gentleman, “will 
proceed to give his first lesson here, Mr. Gradgrind, I shall be 
happy, at 3^0111* request, to observe his mode of procedure.” 

Mr. Gradgrind was much obliged. “Mr. M‘Choakumchild, 
we only wait for 3^011.” 

So, Mr. M‘Choakumchild began in his best manner. He 
and some one hundred and forty other schoolmasters, had been 
lately turned at the same time, in the same factory, on the same 
principles, like so many pianoforte legs. He had been put 
through an immense variety of paces, and had answered vol- 


HARD TIMES. 


15 


limes of head-breaking questions. Orthography, etymology, 
syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and 
general cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, 
algebra, land-surveying and levelling, vocal music and drawing 
from models, were all at the ends of his ten chilled fingers. 
He had worked his stony way into Her Majesty’s most Hon- 
ourable Privy Council’s Schedule B, and had taken the bloom 
off the higher branches of mathematics and physical science, 
French, German, Latin, and Greek. He knew all about all the 
Water Sheds of all the world (whatever they are), and all the 
histories of all the peoples, and all the names of all the rivers 
and mountains, and all the productions, manners, and customs 
of all the countries, and all their boundaries and bearings on the 
two and thirty points of the compass. Ah, rather overdone, 
M‘Choakumchild. If he had only learned a little less, how im’ 
finitely better he might have been taught much more ! 

He went to work in this preparatory lesson, not unlike Mor- 
giana in the Forty Thieves : looking into all the vessels ranged 
before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say, 
good M‘Choakumchild. When from thy boiling store, thou shalt 
fill each jar brim full by and by, dost thou think that thou wilt 
always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within — or some- 
times only maim him and distort him ! 


CHAPTER HI. 

A Loophole. 

GRADGRIND walked homeward from the school,. 

^ considerable satisfaction. It was his 

school, and he intended it to be a model. He in- 
tended every child in it to be a model — just as the 
young Gradgrinds were all models. 

There were five young Gradgrinds, and they were models 
every one. I'hey had been lectured at, from their tenderest 
years ; coursed, like little hares. Almost as soon as they could 
run alone, they had been made to run to the lecture-room. The 
first object with which they had an association, or of which they « 
had a remembrance, was a large black board with a dry Ogre 
chalking ghastly white figures on it. 

Not that they knew, by name or nature, anything about an 


i6 


/lA/^D TIMES. 


Ogre. Fact forbid ! I only use the word to express a mon- 
ster in a lecturing castle, with Heaven knows how many heads 
manipulated into one, taking childhood captive, and dragging 
it into gloomy statistical dens by the hair. 

No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon ; it 
was up in the moon before it could speak distinctly. No little 
..Gradgrind had ever learnt the silly jingle. Twinkle, twinkle, 
little star ; how I wonder what you are ! No little Gradgrind 
had ever known wonder on the subject, each little Gradgrind 
having at five years old dissected the Great Bear like a Pro- 
fessor Owen, and driven Charles’s Wain like a locomotive 
engine-driver. No little Gradgrind had ever associated a cow 
in a field with that famous cow with the crumpled horn who 
tossed the dog who worried the cat v/ho killed the rat who ate 
the malt, or with that yet more famous cow who swallowed 
Tom Thumb : it had never heard of those celebrities, and had 
only been introduced to a cow as a gramnivorous ruminating 
quadruped with several stomachs. 

To his matter-of-fact home, which was called Stone Lodge, 
Mr. Gradgrind directed his steps. He had virtually retired 
from the wholesale hardware trade before he built Stone Lodge, 
and was now looking about for a suitable opportunity of making 
an arithmetical figure in Parliament. Stone Lodge was situated 
on a moor within a mile or two of a great town — called Coke- 
^ town in the ])resent faithful guide-book. 

A very regular feature on the face of the country. Stone 
Lodge was. Not the least disguise toned down or shaded off 
that uncom])romising fact in the landscape. A great square 
house, with a heavy portico darkening the principal windows, as 
its master’s heavy brows overshadowed his eyes. A calculated, 
cast up, balanced, and proved house. Six windows on this 
side of the door, six on that side ; a total of twelve in this 
wing, a total of twelve in the other wing ; four-and-twenty car- 
ried over to the back wings. A lawn and garden and an infant 
avenue, all ruled straight like a botanical account-book. Gas 
and ventilation, drainage and water-service, all of the primest 
(luality. Iron clamps and girders, fireproof from top to bottom ; 
mechanical lifts for the housemaid, with all their brushes and 
brooms ; everything that heart could desire. 

Everything ? Well, I suppose so. The little Gradgrinds had 
^ cabinets in various departments of science too. They had a 
little conchological cabinet, and a little metallurgical cabinet, 
and a little mineralogical cabinet ; and the specimens were all 
arranged and labelled, and the bits of stone and ore looked as 


IlAI?n TIMES. 


17 

though they might have been broken from the parent substances 
by those tremendously hard instruments their own names ; and, 
to paraphrase the idle legeiKl of Peter Piper, who had never 
found his way into their nursery, If the greedy little Gradgrinds 
grasped at more than this, what was it for good gracious good- 
ness* sake, that the greedy little Gradgrinds grasped at ! 

Their father walked on in a hopeful and satisfied frame of 
mind. He was an affectionate father, after his manner ; but he 
would probably have described himself (if he had been put, like 
Sissy Jupe, upon a definition) as “an eminently practical” 
father. He had a particular pride in the phrase eminently 
practical, which was considered to have a special application to 
him. Whatsoever the public meeting held in Coketown, and 
whatsoever the subject of such meeting, some Coketowner was 
sure to seize the occasion of alluding to his eminently 
practical friend Gradgrind. This always pleased the emi- 
nently practical friend. He knew it to be his due, but bis due 
was acceptable. 

He had reached the neutral ground upon the outskirts of the 
town, which was neither town nor country, and yet was either 
spoiled, when his ears were invaded by the sound of music. 
The clashing and banging band attached to the horse-riding es- 
tablishment which had there set up its rest in a wooden pavilion, 
was in full bray. A flag, floating from the summit of the tem- 
ple, proclaimed to mankind that it was “ Sleary’s Horse-riding” 
which claimed their suffrages, Sleary himself, a stout modern 
statue with a money-box at its elbow, in an ecclesiastical niche 
of early Gothic architecture, took the money. Miss Josephine 
Sleary, as some very long and very narrow strips of printed bill 
announced, was then inaugurating the entertainments with her 
graceful equestrian Tyrolean flower-act. Among the other 
pleasing but always strictly moral wonders which must be seen 
to be believed. Signor Jupe was that afternoon to “ elucidate 
the diverting accomplishments of his highly trained per- 
forming dog Merrylegs.” He was also to exhibit “his astound- 
ing feat of throwing seventy-five hundred-weight in rapid suc- 
cession backhanded over his head thus forming a fountain of 
solid iron in mid-air, a feat never before attempted in this or 
any other country and which having elicited such rapturous 
plaudits from enthusiastic throngs it cannot be withdrawn.” 
The same Signor Jupe was to “enliven the varied performances 
at frequent intervals with his chaste Shakesperean quips and re- 
torts.” Lastly, he was to wind them up by appearing in his 
favourite character of Mr. William Button, of Tooley Street, in 


8 


I/AJHD rixMES. 


“ the highly novel and laughable hippo-coinedietta of The 
Tailor’s Journey to Brentford.” 

'Fhoinas Gradgrind took no heed of these trivialities of course, 
but passed on as a practical man ought to pass on, either brush- 
ing the noisy insects from his thoughts, or consigning them to 
the House of Correction. But, the turning of the road took 
him by the back of the booth, and at the back of the booth a 
number of children were congregated in a number of stealthy 
attitudes, striving to peep in at the hidden glories of the place. 

This brought him to a stop. “ Now, to think of these vaga- 
bonds,” said he, “ attracting the young rabble from a model 
school.” 

A space of stunted grass and dry rubbish being between him 
and the young rabble, he took his eyeglass out of his waistcoat 
to look for any child he knew by name, and might order off. 
Phenomenon almost incredible though distinctly seen, what did 
he then behold but his own metallurgical Louisa peeping with 
all her might through a hole in a deal board, and his own math- 
ematical Thomas abasing himself on the ground to catch but a 
hoof of the graceful equestrian Tyrolean flower-act ! 

Dumb with amazement, Mr. Gradgrind crossed to the spot 
where his family was thus disgraced, laid his hand upon each 
erring child, and said : 

“ Louisa ! ! Thomas ! ! ” 

Both rose, red and disconcerted. But Louisa looked at her 
father with more boldness than Thomas did. Indeed, Thomas 
did not look at him, but gave himself up to be taken home like 
a machine. 

“ In the name of wonder, idleness, and folly ! ” said Mr. 
Gradgrind, leading each away by a hand ; “ what do you do 
here ? ” 

“Wanted to see what it was like,” returned Louisa, shortly. 

, “ What it was like ? ” 

“Yes, father.” 

There was an air of jaded sullenness in them both, and par- 
ticularly in the girl : yet, struggling through the dissatisfaction 
of her face, there was a light with nothing to rest upon, a fire 
with nothing to burn, a starved imagination keeping life in it- 
self somehow, which brightened its expression. Not with the 
brightness natural to cheerful youth, but with uncertain, eager, 
doubtful flashes, which had something painful in them, analogous 
to the changes on a blind face groping its way. 

She was a child now, of fifteen or sixteen ; but at no distant 
day would seem to become a woman all at once, Her father 


HARD TIMES. 


19 


thought so as he looked at her. She was pretty. Would have 
been self-willed (he thought in his eminently practical way), but 
for her bringing-up. 

“ Thomas, though I have the fact before me, I find it difficult 
to believe that you, with your education and resources, should 
have brought your sister to a scene like this.” 

“ I brought him^ father,” said Louisa, quickly. “ I asked 
him to come.” 

“ I am sorry to hear it. I am very sorry indeed to hear it. 
It makes Thomas no better, and it makes you worse, Louisa.” 

She looked at her father again, but no tear fell down her 
cheek. 

“ You ! Thomas and you, to whom the circle of the sciences 
is open ; Thomas and you, who may be said to be replete with 
facts ; Thomas and you, who have been trained to mathemati- 
cal exactness ; Thomas and you, here !” cried Mr. Gradgrind. 
“ In this degraded position ! I am amazed.” 

I was tired, father. I have been tired a long time,” said 
Louisa. 

Tired ? Of what ? ” asked the astonished father. 

I don’t know of what — of everything I think.” 

“Say not another word,” returned Mr. Gradgrind. “You 
are childish. I will hear no more.” He did not speak again 
until they had walked some half-a-mile in silence, when he 
gravely broke out with, “ What would your best friends say, 
Louisa? Do you attach no value to their good opinion? 
What would Mr. Bounderby say ? ” 

At the mention of this name, his daughter stole a look at 
him, remarkable for its intense and searching character. He 
saw nothing of it, for before he looked at her, she had again 
cast down her eyes ! 

“What,” he repeated presently, “would Mr. Bounderby 
say ! ” All the way to Stone Lodge, as with grave indignation 
he led the two delinquents home, he repeated at intervals, 
“ What would Mr. Bounderby say ! ” — as if Mr. Bounderby had 
been Mrs. Grundy. 


20 


TIMES. 


CHAPTER IV. 

Mr. Bounderhy. 

OT being Mrs. Grundy, who was Mr. Bounderby ? 

Why, Mr. Bounderby was as near being Mr. Grad- 
grind’s bosom friend, as a man perfectly devoid of sen- 
timent can approach that spiritual relationship towards 
another man perfectly devoid of sentiment. So near was Mr. 
Bounderby — or, if the reader should prefer it, so far otf. 

He was a rich man : banker, merchant, manufacturer, and 
what not. A big, loud man, with a stare, and a metallic laugh. 
A man made out of a coarse material, which seemed to have 
been stretched to make so much of him. A man with a great 
puffed head and forehead, swelled veins in his temples, and such 
a strained skin to his face that it seemed to hold his eyes open, 
and lift his eyebrows up. A man with a pervading appearance 
on him of being inflated like a balloon, and ready to start. A 
man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man. 
A man who was always proclaiming, through that brassy speak- 
ing-trumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his old pov- 
erty. A man who was the Bully of humility. 

A year or two younger than his eminently practical friend, 
Mr. Bounderby looked older ; his seven or eight and forty might 
have had the seven or eight added to it again, without surpris- 
ing anybody. He had not much hair. One might have fancied 
he had talked it off ; and that what was left, all standing up in 
disorder, was in that condition from being constantly blown 
about by his windy boastfulness. 

In the formal drawing-room of Stone Lodge, standing on the 
hearth-rug, warming himself before the fire, Mr. Bounderby de- 
livered some observations to Mrs. Gradgrind on the circum- 
stance of its being his birthday. He stood before the fire, 
partly because it was a cool spring afternoon, though the sun 
shone ; partly because the shade of Stone Lodge was always 
haunted by the ghost of damp mortar; partly because he thus 
took up a commanding position, from which to subdue Mrs. 
Gradgrind. 

“I hadn’t a shoe to my foot. As to a stocking, I didn’t 
know such a thing by name. I passed the day in a ditch, and 
the night in a pigsty. That’s the way I spent my tenth birth- 



TIMES. 


21 


day. Not that a ditch was new to me, for I was born in a 
ditch.” 

Mrs. Gradgrind, a little, thin, white, pink-eyed bundle of 
shawls, of surpassing feebleness, mental and bodily; who was 
always taking physic without any effect, and who, whenever she 
showed a symptom of coming to life, was invariably stunned by 
some weighty piece of fact tumbling on her ; Mrs. Gradgrind 
hoped it was a dry ditch ? 

“No ! As wet as a sop. A foot of water in it,” said Mr. 
Bonn derby. 

“ Enough to give a baby cold,” Mrs. Gradgrind considered. 

“ Cold? I was born with inflammation of the lungs, and of 
everything else, I believe, that was capable of inflammation,” 
returned Mr. Bounderby. “For years, ma’am, I was one of the 
most miserable little wretches ever seen. I was so sickly, that 
I was always moaning and groaning. I was so ragged and dirty, 
that you wouldn’t have touched me with a pair of tongs.” 

Mrs. Gradgrind faintly looked at the tongs, as the most ap- 
propriate thing her imbecility could think of doing. 

“How I fought through it, I don’t know,” said Bounderby. 
“I was determined, 1 suppose. I have been a determined 
character in later life, and I suppose 1 was then. Here I am, 
Mrs. Gradgrind, anyhow, and nobody to thank for my being 
here, but myself.” 

Mrs. Gradgrind meekly and weakly hoped that his mother — 

“ My mother ? Bolted, ma’am ! ” said Bounderby. 

Mrs. Gradgrind, stunned as usual, collapsed and gave it up. 

“ My mother left me to my grandmother,” said Bounderby ; 

“ and, aocording to the best of my remembrance, my grand- 
mother was the wickedest and the worst old woman that ever 
lived. If I got a little pair of shoes by any chance, she would 
take ’em off and sell ’em for drink. Why, I have known that 
grandmother of mine lie in her bed and drink her fourteen 
glasses of liquor before breakfast ! ” 

Mrs. Gradgrind, weakly smiling, and giving no other sign of 
vitality, looked (as she always did) like an indifferently executed 
transparency of a small female figure, without enough light be- 
hind it. ' . 

“She kept a chandler’s shop,” pursued Bounderby, “and 
kept me in an egg-box. That was the cot of my infancy ; an 
old egg-box. As soon as I was big enough to run away, of 
course I ran away. Then I became a young vagabond ; and 
instead of one old woman knocking me about and starving me, 
everybody of all ages knocked me about and starved me. Tliey 


22 


//AA'D TIMES. 


were right ; they had no business to do anything else. I was a 
nuisance, an incumbrance, and a pest. I know that very well.” 

His pride in having at any time of his life achieved such a 
great social distinction as to be a nuisance, an incumbrance, 
and a pest, was only to be satisfied by three sonorous repeti- 
tions of the boast. 

“I was to pull through it I suppose, Mrs. Gradgrind. 
Whether I was to do it or not, ma’am, I did it. I pulled, 
through it, though nobody threw me out a rope. Vagabond, 
errand-boy, vagabond, laborer, porter, clerk, chief manager, 
small partner, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. Those are the 
antecedents, and the culmination. Josiah Bounderby of Coke- 
town learnt his letters from the outsides of the shops, Mrs. 
Gradgrind, and was first able to tell the time upon a dial-plate, 
from studying the steeple clock of St. Giles’s Church, London, 
under the direction of a drunken cripple, who was a convicted 
thief, and an incorrigible vagrant. Tell Josiah Bounderby of 
Coketown, of your district schools and your model schools, and 
your training schools, and your whole kettle-of-fish of schools ; 
and Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, tells you plainly, all right, 
all correct — he hadn’t such advantages — but let us have hard- 
headed, solid-fisted people — the education that made him won’t 
do for everybody, he knows well — such and such his education 
was, however, and you may force him to swallow boiling fat, 
but you shall never force him to suppress the facts of his life.’’ 

Being heated when he arrived at this climax, Josiah Boun- 
derby of Coketown stopped. He stopped just as his eminently 
practical friend, still accompanied by the two young culprits, 
entered the room. His eminently practical friend, on seeing 
him, stopped also, and gave Louisa a reproachful look that 
plainly said, “Behold your Bounderby ! ” * 

“Well!” blustered Mr. Bounderby, “what’s the matter?” 

“What is young Thomas in the dumps about ?” 

He spoke of young Thomas, but he looked at Louisa. 

“We were peeping at the circus,” muttered Louisa haughtily, 
without lifting up her eyes, “ and father caught us.” 

“And Mrs. Gradgrind,” said her husband in a lofty manner, 

“ I should as soon have expected to find my children reading 
poetry.” 

“ Dear me,” whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind. “ How can you, 
Louisa and Thomas ! I wonder at you. I declare you’re 
enough to make one regret ever having had a family at all. I 
have a great mind to say I wish I hadn’t. Then what would 
you have done, I should like to know.” 


HARD TIMES. 


23 

Mr. Gradgrind did not seem favorably impressed by these 
cogent remarks. He frowned impatiently. 

“As if, with my head in its present throbbing state, you 
couldn’t go and look at the shells and minerals and things pro- 
vided for you, instead of circuses ! ” said Mrs. Gradgrind. “ You 
know, as well as I do, no young people have circus masters, or 
keep circuses in cabinets, or attend lectures about circuses. 
What can you possibly want to know of circuses then ? I am 
sure you have enough to do, if that’s what you want. With my 
head in its present state, I couldn’t remember the mere names 
of half the facts you have got to attend to.” 

“ That’s the reason ! ” pouted Louisa. 

“ Don’t tell me that’s the reason, because it can be nothing 
of the sort,” said Mrs. Gradgrind. “ Go and be somethingolo- 
gical directly.” Mrs. Gradgrind was not a scientific character,, 
and usually dismissed her children to their studies with this gen- 
eral injunction to choos6 their pursuit. 

In truth, Mrs. Gradgrind’s stock of facts in general was woe- 
fully defective ; but Mr. Gradgrind in raising her to her high 
matrimonial position, had been influenced by two reasons. 
Firstly, she was most satisfactory as a question of figures ; and 
secondly, she had “ no nonsense ” about her. By nonsense he 
meant fancy ; and truly it is probable she was as free from any 
alloy of that nature, as any human being not arrived at the per- 
fection of an absolute idiot, ever was. 

The simple circumstance of being left alone with her husband 
and Mr. Bounderby, was sufficient to stun this admirable lady 
again without collision between herself and any other fact. So, 
she once more died away, and nobody minded her. 

“ Bounderby,” said Mr. Gradgrind, drawing a chair to the fire- 
side, “ you are always so interested in my young people — par- 
ticularly in Louisa — that I make no apology for saying to you, 

1 am very much vexed by this discovery. I have systematically 
devoted myself (as you know) to the education of the reason of 
my family. The reason is (as you know) the only faculty to 
which education should be addressed. And yet, Bounderby, it 
would appear from this unexpected circumstance of to-day, 
though in itself a trifling one, as if something had crept into 
Thomas’s and Louisa’s minds which is — or rather, which is not 
— I don’t know that I can express myself better than by saying 
— which has never been intended to be developed, and in which 
their reason has no part.” 

“There certainly is no reason in looking with interest at a 
parcel of vagabonds,” returned Bounderby. “ When 1 was a 


24 


HARD TIMES. 


vagabond myself, nobody looked widi any interest at me ; I 
know that.” 

“ Then comes the question,” said the eminently practical 
father, with his eyes on the fire, “ in. what has this vulgar curi- 
osity its rise ? ” 

“ I’ll tell you in what. In idle imagination.” 

? “I hope not,” said the eminently practical ; “ I confess, 
however, the misgiving has crossed me on my way home.” 

“ In idle imagination, Gradgrind,” repeated Bounderby. 
“ A very bad thing for anybody, but a cursed bad thing for a 
girl like Louisa. I should ask Mrs. Gradgrind’s pardon for 
strong expressions, but that she knows very well that I am not 
a refined character. Whoever expects refinement in me will be 
disappointed. I hadn’t a refined bringing up.” 

“ Whether,” said Mr. Gradgrind, pondering with his hands 
in his pockets, and his cavernous eyes on the fire, “ whether 
any instructor or servant can havfe suggested anything ? 
Whether Louisa or Thomas can have been reading anything? 
Whether, in spite of all precautions, any idle storybook can 
have got into the house ? Because, in minds that have been 
practically formed by rule and line, from the cradle upwards, 
this is so curious, so incomprehensible.” 

“ Stop a bit ! ” cried Bounderby, who all this time had been 
standing, as before, on the hearth, bursting at the very furniture 
of the room with explosive humility. “You have one of those 
strollers’ children in the school.” 

“ Cecilia Jiipe, by name,” said Mr. Gradgrind, with some- 
thing of a stricken look at his friend. 

“ Now, stop a bit ! ” cried Bounderby again. “ How did 
she come there ?” 

“ Why, the fact is, I saw the girl myself, for the first time, 
only just now. She specially applied here at the house to be 
admitted, as not regularly belonging to our town, and — yes, 
you are right, Bounderby, you are right.” 

“ Now, stop a bit ! ” cried Bounderby, once more. “ Louisa 
saw her when she came ? ” 

“ Louisa certainly did see her, for she mentioned the applica- 
tion to me. But Louisa saw her I have no doubt, in Mrs. 
Gradgrind’s presence.” 

“Pray, Mrs. Gradgrind,” said Bounderby, “ what passed ? ” 

“Oh, my poor health!” returned Mrs. Gradgrind. “The 
girl wanted to come to the school, and Mr. Gradgrind wanted 
girls to come to the school, and I^ouisa and Thomas both said 
that the girl wanted to come, and that Mr. Gradgrind wanted 


J/A/?D TIMES, 


25 

girls to come, and how was it possible to contradict them when 
such was the fact ! ” 

“ Now 1 tell you what, Gradgrind ! ” said Mr. Bounderby. 
“ Turn this girl to the rightabout, and there’s an end of it.” 

“ I am much of your opinion.” 

“ Do it at once,” said Bounderby, “ has always been my 
motto from a child. When I thought I would run away from 
my egg-box and my grandmother, I did it at once. Do you * 
the same. Do this at once ! ” 

“ Are )'OU walking?”, asked his friend. “ I have the father’s 
address. Perhaps you would not mind walking to town with 
me ? ” 

“ Not the least in the world,” said Mr. Bounderby, “ as long 
as you do it at once ! ” 

So, Mr. Bounderby threw on his hat — he always threw it on, 
as expressing a man who has been far too busily employed in 
making himself, to acquire any fashion of wearing his hat — and 
with his hands in his pockets, sauntered out into the hall. “ I 
never wear gloves,” it was his custom to say. “ I didn’t climb 
up the ladder in them. Shouldn’t be so high up, if I had.” 

Being left to saunter in the hall a minute or two while Mr. 
Gradgrind went up-stairs for the address, he opened the door of 
the children’s study and looked into that serene floor-clothed 
apartment, which, notwithstanding its book-cases and its cabi- 
nets and its variety of learned and philosophical appliances, had 
much of the genial aspect of a room devoted to hair-cutting. 
Louisa languidly leaned upon the window looking out, without 
looking at anything, while young Thomas stood snifflng re- 
vengefully at the fire. Adam Smith, and Malthus, tw'O younger 
Gradgrinds, were out at lecture in custody ; and little Jane, 
after manufacturing a good deal of moist pipe-clay on her face 
wuth slate-pencil and tears, had fallen asleep over vulgar frac- 
tions. 

It’s all right now, Louisa ; it’s all right, young Thomas,” 
said Mr. Bounderby ; “you won’t do so anymore. I’ll answer 
for its being all over with father. Well, Louisa, that’s worth a 
kiss, isn’t it ? ” 

“You can take one, Mr. Bounderby,” returned Louisa, when 
she had coldly paused, and slowly walked across the room, and 
ungraciously raised her cheek towards him, with her face turned 
away. 

“Always my pet, ain’t you, Louisa?” said Mr. Bounderby. 
“ Good bye, Louisa ! ” 

He went his way, but she stood on the same spot, rubbing 
S 


26 


HARD TIMES, 


the cheek he had kissed, with her handkerchief, until it was 
burning red. She was still doing this, live minutes afterwards. 

“What are you about. Loo?" her brother sulkily remon- 
strated. “ You’ll rub a hole in your face.” 

“ You may cut the piece out with your penknife if you like, 
Tom. I wouldn’t cry ! ” 


CHAPTER V. 

The Key-note. 

OKETOWN, to which Messrs. Bounderby and Grad- 
grind now walked, was a triumph of fact ; it had no 
greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs. Gradgrind her- 
self. Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before 
pursuing our tune. 

It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been 
red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it ; but as mat- 
ters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the 
painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall 
chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed 
themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had 
a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling 
dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was 
a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of 
the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the 
head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It con- 
tained several large streets all very like one another, and many 
small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people 
equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same 
hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the 
same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday 
and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and 
the next. 

These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable 
from the work by which it was sustained ; against them were to • 
be set off, comforts of life, which found their way all over the 
world, and elegances of life which made, we will not ask how 
much of the fine lady, who could scarcely bear to hear the place 
mentioned. The rest of its features were voluntary, and they 
were these. 

You saw nothing in Coketown bnt what was severely work- 




TIMES. 


27 


fill. If the members of a religious persuasion built a chapel there 
— as the members of eighteen religious persuasions had done — 
they made it a pious warehouse of red brick, with sometimes 
(but this is only in highly ornamented examples) a bell in a 
bird-cage on the top of it. The solitary exception was the 
New Church ; a stuccoed edifice with a square steeple over 
the door, terminating in four short pinnacles like florid wooden 
legs. All the public inscriptions in the town were painted alike, in 
severe characters of black and white. The jail might have been 
the infirmary, the infirmary might have been the jail, the town- 
hall might have been either, or both or anything else, for any- 
thing that appeared to the contrary in the graces of their con- 
struction. Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material asjiect 
of the town ; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial. The 
M‘Choakumchild school was all fact, and the school of design 
was all fact, and the relations between master and man were all 
fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in hospital and 
the cemetery, and what you couldn’t state in figures, or show to 
be purchaseable in the cheapest market and saleable in the 
dearest, was not, and never should be, world without end, Amen. 

A town so sacred to fact, and so triumphant in its assertion, 
of course got on well? Why, no, not quite well. No? Dear 
me ! 

No. Coketown did not come out of its own furnaces, in all 
respects like gold that had stood the fire. First, the perplexing 
mystery of the place was. Who belonged to the eighteen de- 
nominations ? Because, who ever did, the labouring people 
did not. It was very strange to walk through the streets on a 
Sunday morning, and note how few of them the barbarous jang- 
ling of bells that was driving the sick and nervous mad, called 
away from their own quarter, from their own close rooms, from 
the corners of their own streets, where they lounged listlessly, 
gazing at all the church and chapel going, as at a thing with 
which they had no manner of concern. Nor was it merely the 
stranger who noticed this, because there was a native organisa- 
tion in Coketown itself, whose members were to be heard of in 
the House of Commons every session, indignantly petitioning 
for acts of parliament that should make these people religious 
by main force. Then came the Teetotal Society, who com- 
plained that these same people would get drunk, and showed 
in tabular statements that they did get ^ drunk, and proved at 
tea parties that no inducement, human or Divine (except a 
medal), would induce them to forego their custom of getting 
drunk. Then came the chemist and druggist, with other tabu- 


28 


TIMES, 


lar statements, showing that when they didn’t get drunk, they 
took opium. Then came the experienced chaplain of the jail, 
with more tabular statements, outdoing all the previous tabular 
statements, and showing that the same people woicld resort to 
low haunts, hidden from the public eye, where they heard low 
singing and saw low dancing, and mayhap joined in it ; and 
where A. B., aged twenty-four next birthday, and committed 
for eighteen months’ solitary, had himself said (not that he had 
ever shown himself particularly worthy of belief) his ruin began, 
as he was perfectly sure and confident that otherwise he would 
have been a tip-top moral specimen. Then came Mr. Grad- 
grind and Mr. Bounderby, the two gentlemen at this present 
moment walking through Coketown, and both eminently practi- 
cal, who could, on occasion, furnish more tabular statements 
derived from their own personal experience, and illustrated by 
cases they had known and seen, from which it clearly appeared 
— in short, it was the only clear thing in the case — that these 
same people were a bad lot altogether, gentlemen ; that do 
what you would for them they were never thankful for it, gen- 
tlemen ; that they were restless, gentlemen ; that they never 
knew what they wanted ; that they live upon the best, and 
bought fresh butter ; and insisted on Mocha cotfee, and re- 
jected all but prime parts of meaj;, and yet were eternally dis- 
satisfied and unmanageable. In short it was the moral of the 
old nursery fable : 

There was an old woman, and what do you think ? 

She lived upon nothing but victuals and drink ; 

Victuals and drink were the whole of her diet. 

And yet this old woman would never be quiet. 

Is it possible, I wonder, that there was any analogy between 
the case of the Coketown pojDulation and the case of the little 
Gradgrinds ? Surely, none of us' in our sober senses and ac- 
quainted with figures, are to be told at this time of day, that one 
of the foremost elements in the existence of the Coketown 
working-people had been for scores of years, deliberately set at 
naught ? That there was any Fancy in them demanding to be 
brought into healthy existence instead of struggling on in con- 
vulsions ? That exactly in the ratio as they worked long and 
monotonously, the craving grew within them for some physical 
relief — some relaxation, encouraging good humour and good 
spirits, and giving them a vent — some recognised holiday, though 
it were but for an honest dance to a stirring band of mSsic, — 
some occasional light pie in 'which even MChoakumchild had 
no finger — which craving must and would be satisfied aright, or 


I/AJ^D TIMES. 


29 

must and would inevitably go wrong, until the laws of the 
Creation were repealed ? 

“ This man lives at Pod’s End, and I don’t quite know Pod’s 
End,” said Mr. Gradgrind. “ Which is it, Bounderby ? ” 

Mr. Bounderby knew it was somewhere down town, but knew 
no more respecting it. So they stopped for a moment, looking 
ibout. 

Almost as they did so, there came running round the corner 
of the street at a quick pace and with a frightened look, a girl 
wliom Mr. Gradgrind recognised. “ Halloa ! ” said he. “ Stop ! 
Where are you going? Stop ! ” Girl number twenty stopped 
then, ])alpitating, and made him a curtsey. 

“ Why are you tearing about the streets,” said Mr. Gradgrind, 
“ in this improper manner ? ” 

“ I wa.s — 1 was run after, sir,” the girl panted, “ and I 
wanted to get away.” 

“ Run after ?” repeated Mr. Gradgrind. “Who would run 
after you ? ” 

The question was unexpectedly and suddenly answered for 
her, by the colourless boy, Bitzer, who came round the corner 
with such blind speed and so little anticipating a stoppage on 
the pavement, that he brought himself up against Mr. Grad- 
grind’s waistcoat and rebounded into the road. 

“What do you mean, boy?” said Mr. Gradgrind. “What 
are you doing ? How dare you dash against— rC very body — in 
this manner ? ” 

Bitzer [)icked up his cap, which the concussion had knocked 
off ; and backing, and knuckling his forehead, pleaded that it 
was an accident. 

“Was this boy running after you, Jupe?” asked Mr. Grad- 
grind. 

- “ Yes, sir,” said the girl reluctantly. 

“ No, I wasn’t, sir ! ” cried Bitzer. “ Not till she run away 
from me. But the horse-riders never mind what they say, sir ; 
they’re famous for it. You know the horse-riders are famous 
for never minding what they say,” addressing Sissy. “It’s as 
well known in the town as — please, sir, as the multiplication 
table isn’t known to the horse-riders.” Bitzer tried Mr. Boun- 
derby with this. 

“ He frightened me so,” said the girl, “ with his cruel faces ! ” 

“Oh!” cried Bitzer. “Oh! An’t you one of the rest! 
An’t you a hoi se-rider ! I never looked at her, sir. 1 asked her 
if she would know how to define a horse to-morrow, and offered 
to tell her again, and she ran away, and I ran after her, sir, that 


30 


HAJ^n TIMES. 


she might know how to answer when she was asked. Yon 
wouldn’t have thought of saying such mischief if you hadn’t 
been a horse rider ! ” 

“ Her calling seems to be pretty well known among ’em,” 
observed Mr. Bounderby. “ You’d have had the whole school 
pee[)ing in a row, in a' week.” 

Truly, I think so,” returned his friend. “ Bitzer, turn you 
about and take yourself home. Jupe, stay here a moment. Let 
me hear of your running in this manner any more, boy, and 
you will hear of me through the master of the school. You un- 
derstand what I mean. Go along.” 

The boy stopped in his rapid blinking, knuckled his fore- 
head again, glanced at Sissy, turned about, and retreated. 

“Now, giVl,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “take this gentleman and 
me to your father’s ; we are going there. What have you got 
in that bottle you are carrying ? ” 

“ Gin,” said Mr. Bounderby. 

“ Dear, no sir ! It’s the nine oils.” 

“The what ?” cried Mr. Bounderby. 

“The nine oils, sir. To rub father with.” 

“ Then,” said Mr. Bounderby, with a loud short laugh, “what 
the devil do you rub your father with nine oils for ? ” 

“It’s what our people always use, sir, when they get any 
hurts in the ring,” replied the girl, looking over her shoulder, 
to assure herself that her pursuer was gone. “ They bruise 
themselves very bad sometimes.” 

“Serve ’em right,” said Mr. Bounderby, “ for being idle.” 
She glanced up at his face, with mingled astonishment and 
dread. 

“ By George ! ” said Mr. Bounderby, “ when I was four or 
five years younger than you, 1 had worse bruises upon me than 
ton oils, twenty oils, forty oils would have rubbed off. I 
didn’t get ’em by posture-making, but by being banged about. 
There was no rope-dancing for me ; 1 danced on the bare 
ground and was larruped with the rope.” 

Mr. Gradgrind, though hard enough, was by no means so 
rough a man as Mr. Bounderby. His character was not un- 
kind, all things considered ; it might have been a very kind one 
indeed, if he had only made some round mistake in the arith- 
metic that balanced it, years ago. He said, in what he meant 
for a re-assuring tone, as they turned down a narrow road, 
“And this is Pod’s End ; is it, Jupe? ” 

' “ This is it, sir, and — if you wouldn’t mind, sir— this is the 
house.” 


7/A/^n TIMES. 


31 


She stopped, at twilight, at the door of a mean little public 
house, with dim red lights in it. As haggard and as shabby, 
as if, for want of custom, it had itself taken to drinking, and 
had gone the way all drunkards go, and was very near the end 
of it. 

“It’s only crossing the bar, sir, and up the stairs, if you^ 
wouldn’t mind, and waiting there for a moment till I get a can-" 
die. If you should hear a dog, sir, it’s only Merrylegs, and he 
only barks.” 

“ Merrylegs and nine oils, eh ! ” said Mr. Bounderby, en- 
tering last with his metallic laugh. “ Pretty well this, for a 
self-made man ! ” 


CHAPTER VI. 

Sleary's Horsemanship. 


HE name of the public house was the Pegasus’s Arms. 
The Pegasus’s legs might have been more to the pur- 
pose ; but, underneath the winged horse upon the 
sign-board, the Pegusas’s Arms was inscribed in Ro- 
man letters. Beneath that inscription again, in a flowing scroll, 
he painter had touched off the lines ; 



Good malt makes good beer, 

Walk in, and they’ll draw it here ; 
Good wine makes good brandy, 

Give us a call, and you’ll find it handy. 


Framed and glazed ui)on the wall behind the dingy little bar, 
was another Pegasus — a theatrical one — with real gauze let in 
for his wings, golden stars stuck on all over him, and his ethe- 
real harness made of red silk. 

As it had grown too dusky without, to see the sign, and as it 
had not grown light enough within to see the picture, Mr. 
Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby received no offence from these 
idealities. They followed the girl up some steep corner-stairs 
without meeting any one, and stopped in the dark while she 
went on for a candle. They expected every moment to hear 
Merrylegs give tongue, but the highly trained performing dog 
had not barked when the girl and the candle appeared to- 
gether. 

“ Father is not in our room, sir,” she said, with a face of 




32 


TIMES. 


great surprise. If you wouldn’t mind walking in, I’ll find him 
directly.” 

They walked in ; and Sissy, having set two chairs for them, 
sped away with a quick light step. It was a mean, shabbily 
furnished room, with a bed in it. The white nightcap, embel- 
lished with two peacock’s feathers and a pigtail bolt upright, in 
• vvhich Signor Jupe had that very afternoon enlivened the varied 
performances with his chaste Shaksperian quips and retorts, 
hung upon a nail ; but no other portion of his wardrobe, or 
other token of himself or his pursuits, was to be seen anywhere. 
As to Merrylegs, that respectable ancestor of the highly trained 
animal who went aboard the ark, might have been accidentally 
shut out of it, for any sign of the dog that was manifest to eye 
or ear in the Pegasus’s Arms. 

They heard the doors of rooms above, opening and shutting 
as Sissy went from one to anoth&r in quest of her father ; and 
presently they heard voices expressing surprise. She came 
bounding down again in a great hurry, opened a battered and 
mangy old hair trunk, found it emi)ty, and looked round with 
her hands clasped and her face full of terror. 

“ Father must have gone down to the Booth, sir. I don’t 
know why he should go there, but he must be there ; I’ll bring 
him in a minute ! ” She was gone directly, without her bonnet ; 
with her long, dark, childish hair streaming behind her. 

“What does she mean ! ” said Mr. Gradgrind. “Back in a 
minute? It’s more than a mile off.” 

Before Mr. Bounderby could reply, a young man appeared at 
the door, and introducing himself with the words, “ By your 
leaves, gentlemen ! ” walked in with his hands in his pockets. 
His fiice, close-shaven, thin, and sallow, was shaded by a great 
quantity of dark hair, brushed into a roll all round his head, and 
parted up the centre. His legs were very robust, but shorter 
than legs of good proportions should have been. His chest and 
back were as much too broad, as his legs were too short. He 
was dressed in a Newmarket coat and tight-fitting trousers; 
wore a shawl round his neck ; smelt of lamp-oil, straw, orange- 
peel, horses’ provender, and sawdust ; and looked a most re- 
markable sort of Centaur, compounded of the stable and the 
play-house. Where the one began, and the other ended, no- 
body could have told with any precision, 'fhis gentleman was 
mentioned in the bills of the day as Mr. E. W. B. Childers, so 
justly celebrated for his daring vaulting act as the Wild Hunts- 
man of the North American prairies ; in which popular per- 
formance, a diminutive boy with an old face, who now accom- 


//as:d times. 


33 


panied him, assisted as his infant son : being carried iijisidc 
down over his father’s shoulder, by one foot, and held by the 
crown of his head, heels upwards, in the palm of his father’s 
hand, accoixling to the violent paternal manner in which wild 
huntsmen may be observed to fondle their offspring. Afade up 
with curls, wreaths, wings, white bismuth, and carmine, this 
ho[)eful young person soared into so pleasing a Cupid as to 
constitute the chief delight of the maternal part of the specta- 
tors ; but in private, where his characteristies were a pre- 
cocious cutaway coat and an extremely gruff voice, he became 
of the Turf, turfy. 

“By your leaves, gentlemen,” said Mr. E. W. B. Childers, 
glancing round the room. “It was you, I believe, that were 
wishing to see Jupe ? ” 

“ It was,” said Mr. Gradgrind. “ His daughter has gone to 
fetch him, but I can’t wait; therefore, if you please, I will leave 
a message for him with you.” 

“You see, my friend,” Mr. Bounderby put in, “we are the. 
kind of people who know the value of time, and you are the 
kind of people who don’t know the value of time.” 

“ 1 have not,” retorted Mr. Childers, after surve3dng him from 
head to foot, “ the honour of knowing you ; — but if you mean 
that you can make more money of your time than I can of mine, 
I should judge from your appearance, that you are about 
right.” 

“ And when you have made it, you can keep it too, I should 
think,” said Cupid. 

“Kidderminster, stow that!” said Mr. Childers. (Master 
Kidderminster was Cupid’s mortal name.) 

“What does he come here cheeking us for, then?” cried 
Master Kidderminster, showing a very irascible temperament. 
“If you want to cheek us, pay your ochre at the doors and take 
it out.” 

“ Kidderminster,” said Mr. Childers, raising his voice, “stow 
that ! — Sir,” to Mr. Gradgrind, “ I was addressing myself to you. 
You may or you may not be aware (fo/ perhaps you have not 
been much in the audience), that Jupe has missed his tip very 
often, lately.” 

“ Has — what has he missed ? ” asked Mr. Gradgrind, glancing 
at the potent Bounderby for assistance. 

“ Missed his tip.” 

“ Offered at the Garters four times last night, and never done 
’em once,” said Master Kidderminster. “ Missed his tip at the 
banners, too, and was loose in his ponging.” 

2 * 


34 


HARD TIMES, 


“ Didn’t do what he ought to do. Was short in his leaps and 
bad in his tumbling,” Mr. Childers interpreted. 

“ Oh ! ” said Mr. Gradgrind, “that is tip, is it ?” 

“ In a general way that’s missing his tip,” Mr. E. W. B. Child- 
. ers answered. 

“Nine oils, Merrylegs, missing tips, garters, banners, and 
Ponging, eh?” ejaculated Bounderby, with his laugh of laughs. 
“ Queer sort of company, too, for a man who has raised him- 
self.” 

“ Lower yourself, then,” retorted Cupid, “ Oh Lord ! if 
you’ve raised yourself so high as all that comes to, let yourself 
down a bit.” 

“This is a very obtrusive lad ! ” said Mr. Gradgrind, turning, 
and knitting his brows on him. 

“ We’d have had a young gentleman to meet you, if we had- 
known you were coming,” retorted Master Kidderminster, 
nothing abashed. “ It’s a pity you don’t have a bespeak, being 
so particular. You’re on the Tight-Jeff, ain’t you ?” 

“What does this unmannerly boy mean,” asked Mr. Grad- 
grind, eyeing him in a sort of desperation, “ by Tight-Jeff? ” 

“ There ! Get out, get out ! ” said Mr. Childers, thrusting 
his young friend from the room, rather in the prairie manner. 
“ Tight-Jeff or Slack-Jeff, it don’t much signify : it’s only tight- 
rope and slack-rope. You were going to give me a message for 
Jupe ? ” 

“ Yes, I was.” 

“I'hen,” continued Mr. Childers, quickl)^ “my opinion is, he 
will never receive it. Do you know much of him ? ” 

“ I never saw the man in my life.” 

“ I doubt if you ever will see him now. It’s pretty plain to 
me, he’s off.” 

“ Do you mean that he has deserted his daughter.^” 

“ Ay ! I mean,” said Mr. Childers, with a nod, “ that he has 
cut. He was goosed last night, he was goosed the night before 
last, he was goosed to-day. He has lately got in the way of 
being always goosed, and he can’t stand it.” 

“Why has he been — so very much — Goosed?” asked Mr. 
Gradgrind, forcing the word out of himself, with great solemnity 
and reluctance. 

“ His joints are turning stiff, and he is getting used up,” said 
Childers. “ He has his points as a Cackler still, but he can’t 
get a living out of themS 

“ A Cackler !” Bounderby repeated. Here we go again ! ” 

“ A speaker, if the gentleman likes it better,” said Mr. E. W. 


TIMES. 


35 


B. Childers, superciliously throwing the interpretation over his 
shoulder, and accompanying it with a shake of his long hair — 
which all shook at once. “ Now, it’s a remarkable fact, sir, 
that it cut that man deeper, to know that his daughter knew of 
his being goosed, than to go through with it.” 

“ Good ! ” interrupted Mr. Bounderby. “ This is good. Grad- 
grind ! A man so fond of his daughter, that he runs away from 
her! This is devilish good 1 Ha! ha! Now, I’ll tell you what, 
young man. I haven’t always occupied my present station of 
life. I know what these things are. You may be astonished 
to hear it, but my mother ran away from me^ 

E. W. B. Childers replied pointedly that he was not at all 
astonished to hear it. 

“ V^ery well,” said Bounderby. “ I was born in a ditch, and 
my mother ran away from me. Do I excuse her for it? No. 
Have I ever excused her for it? Not I.' What do I call her 
for it ? I call her probably the very worst woman that ever 
lived in the world, except my drunken grandmother. There’s 
no family pride about me, there’s no imaginative sentimental 
humbug about me. I call a spade a spade ; and I call the 
mother of Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, without any fear 
or any favour, what I should call her if she had been the mother 
of Dick Jones of Wapping. So, with this man. He is a run- 
away rogue and a vagabond, that’s what he is, in English.” 

“ It’s all the same to me what he is or what he is not, whether 
in English or whether in French,” retorted Mr. E, W. B. Child- 
ers, facing about. “ I am telling your friend what’s the fact ; 
if you don’t like to hear it, you can avail yourself of the open 
air. You give it mouth enough, you do ; but give it mouth in 
your own building at least,” remonstrated E. W. B. with stern 
irony. “ Don’t give it mouth in this building, till you’re called 
upon. You Ixive got some building of your own, 1 dare say, 
now ? ” 

“Perhaps so,” replied Mr. Bounderby, rattling his money and 
laughing. 

“Then give it mouth in your own building, will yon, if you 
please?” said Childers. “ Because this isn’t a strong building, 
and too much of you might bring it down ! ” 

Eyeing Mr. Bounderby from head to foot again, he turned 
from him, as from a man finally disposed of, to Mr. Gradgrind. 

“ Jupe sent his daughter out on an errand not an hour ago, 
and then was seen to slip out himself, with his hat over his eyes 
and a bundle tied up in a handkerchief under his arm. She 
will never believe it of him, but he has cut away and left her.” 


3 ^ 


HARD TIMES, 


“ Pray,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “ why will she never believe it of 
him?" 

“Because those two were one. Because they were never 
asunder. Because, up to this time, he seemed to dote upon 
her," said Childers, taking a step or two to look into the empty 
trunk. Both Mr. Childers and Master Kidderminster walked in 
a curious manner ; with their legs wider apart than the general 
run of men, and with a very knowing assumption of being stiff 
in the knees. This walk was common to all the male members 
of Sleary’s company, and was understood to express, that they 
were always on horseback. 

“Poor Sissy! He had better have apprenticed her," said 
Childers, giving his hair another shake, as he looked up from 
the empty box. “ Now, he leaves her without anything to take 
to." 

“ It is creditable to you, who have never been apprenticed, to 
express that opinion," returned Mr. Gradgrind, approvingly. 

“ / never apprenticed ? I was apprenticed when I was seven 
year old." 

“Oh! Indeed?" said Mr. Gradgrind, rather resentfully, 
as having been defrauded of his good opinion. “ I was not 
aware ot its being the custom to apprentice young persons 
to—" 

“ Idleness," Mr. Bounderby put in with a loud laugh. “ No, 
by the Lord Harry ! Nor I ! " 

“Her father always had it in his head," resumed Childers, 
feigning unconsciousness of Mr. Bounderby’s existence, “ that 
she was to be taught the deuce-and-all of education. How it 
got into his head, 1 can’t say ; I can only say that it never got ' 
out. He has been picking up a bit of reading for her, here — • 
and a bit of writing for her, there— and a bit ciphering for her, 
somewhere else — these seven years." 

Mr. E. W. B. Childers took one of his hands out of his 
pockets, stroked his face and chin, and looked, with a good deal 
of doubt and a little hope, at Mr. Gradgrind. From the first 
e had sought to conciliate that gentleman, for the sake of the 
deserted girl. 

“When Sissy got into the school here,” he pursued, “her 
father was as pleased as Punch. I couldn’t altogether make out 
why, myself, as we were not stationary here, being but comers 
and goers anywhere. I suppose, however, he had this move in 
his mind— he was always half-cracked— and then considered her 
provided for. If you should happen to have looked in to-night, 
for the purpose of telling him that you were going to do her any 


i/as:d times. 


37 


little service,” said Mr. Childers, stroking his face again, and 
repeating his look, “ it would be very fortunate and well-timed ; 
very fortunate and well-timed.” 

“ On the contrary,” returned Mr. Gradgrind. “ I came to tell 
him that her connexions made her not an object for the school, 
and that she must not attend any more. Still, if her father really 
has left her, without any connivance on her part — Bounderby, 
let me have a word with you.” 

Upon this, Mr. Childers politely betook himself, with his 
equestrian walk, to the landing outside the door, and there stood 
stroking his face and softly whistling. While thus engaged, he 
overheard such phrases in Mr. Bounderby’s voice as “ No. 1 
say no. I advise you not. 1 say by no means.” While, from 
Mr. Gradgrind, he heard in his much lower tone the words, 
“ But even as an example to l.ouisa, of what this pursuit which 
has been the subject of a vulgar curiosity, leads to and ends in. 
Think of it, Bounderby, in that point of view.” 

Meanwhile, the various members of Sleary’s company grad- 
ually gathered together from the upper regions, where they 
were quartered, and, from standing about, talking in low voices 
to one another and to Mr. Childers, gradually insinuated them- 
selves and him into the room. There were two or three hand- 
some young women among them, with their two or three 
husbands, and their two or three mothers, and their eight or 
nine little children, who did the fairy business when required. 
The father of one of the families was in the habit of balancing 
the father of another of the families on the tO[)of a great pole; 
the father of a third family often made a pyramid of both those 
fathers, with Master Kidderminster for the apex, and himself 
for the base ; all the fathers could dance upon rolling casks, 
stand upon bottles, catch knives and balls, twirl hand-basins, 
ride upon anything, jump over everything, and stick at nothing. 
All the mothers could (and did) dance, upon the slack wire, and 
performed rapid acts on bare-backed steeds ; none of them 
were at all particular in respect of showing their legs ; and one 
of them, alone in a Greek chariot, drove six in hand into every 
town they came to, 'fhey all assumed to be mighty rakish and 
knowing, they were not tidy in their private dresses, they were 
not at all orderly in their domestic arrangements, and the com- 
bined literature of the whole company would have produced 
but a poor letter on any subject. Yet there was remarkable 
gentleness and childishness about these people, a special inap- 
titude for any kind of sharp practice, and an untiring readiness 
to help and pity one another, deserving, often of as much r '- 


38 


HARD TIMES. 


• Spec’, and always of as much generous construction, as the 
every-day virtues of any class of people in the world. 

Last of all appeared Mr. Sleary : a stout man as already 
mentioned, with one fixed eye and one loose eye, a voice (if it 
can be called so) like the efforts of a broken old pair of bellows, 
a flabby surface, and a muddled head which was never sober 
and never drunk. 

“ Thquire ! ” said Mr. Sleary, who was troubled with asthma, 
and whose breath came far too thick and heavy for the letter s, 

“ Your thervant ! Thith ith a bad piethe of bithnith, thith ith. 
You’ve heard of my Clown and hith dog being thuppothed to 
have morrithed ? ” 

He addressed Mr. Gradgrind, who answered “ Yes.” 

“Well Thquire,” he returned, taking off his hat, and rubbing 
the lining with his pocket-handkerchief, which he kept inside 
for the purpose. “ Ith it your intenthion to do anything for the 
poor girl, Thquire ? ” 

“ I shall have something to propose to her when she comes 
back,” said Mr. Gradgrind. 

“ Glad to hear it, Thquire. Not that I want to get rid of the 
child, any more than I want to thtand in her way. I’m willing 
to take her prenthith, though at her age ith late. My voithe ith 
a little huthky, Thquire, and not eathy heard by them ath don’t 
know me ; but if you’d been chilled and heated, heated and 
chilled, chilled and heated in the ring when you wath young, 
ath often ath I have been, your voithe wouldn’t have lathted out, 
Thquire, no more than mine.” 

“ I dare say not,” said Mr. Gradgrind. 

“ What thall it be, Thquire, while you wait ? Thall it be 
Therry ? Give it a name, Thquire ! ” said Mr. Sleary, with 
hospitable ease. 

“ Nothing for me, I thank you,” said Mr. Gradgrind. 

“ Don’t thay nothing, Thquire. What doth your friend 
thay? If you haven’t took your feed yet, have a glath of 
bitterth.” 

Here his daughter Josephine — a pretty fair-haired girl of 
eighteen, who had been tied on a horse at two years old, and 
had made a will at twelve, which she always carried about with 
her, expressive of her dying desire to be drawn to the grave by 
the two piebald ponies — cried “ Father, hush ! she has come ' 
back ! ” then came Sissy Jupe, running into the room as she had 
run out of it. And when she saw them all assembled, and saw 
their looks, and saw no father there, she broke into a most de- 
plorable cry, and took refuge on the bosom of the most accom- 


HARD TIMES. 


39 

plished tight-rope lady (herself in the family way), who knelt 
down on the floor to nurse her, and to weep over her. 

“ 1th an infernal thame, upon my thoul it ith,” said Sleary. 

“ O my dear father, my good kind father, where are you gone ? 
You are gone to try to do me some good, I know ! You are 
gone away for my sake, I am sure. And how miserable and 
helpless you will be without me, poor, poor father, until you; 
come back ! ” It was so pathetic to hear her saying many things 
of this kind, with her face turned upward, and her arms stretched 
out as if she were trying to stop his departing shadow and em- 
brace it, that no one spoke a word until Mr. Bounderby (grow- 
ing impatient) took the case in hand. 

“Now, good people all,” said he, “this is wanton waste of 
time. Let the girl understand the fact. Let her take it from 
me, if you like, who have been run away from, myself. Here, 
what’s your name ! Your father has absconded — deserted you 
— and you mustn’t expect to see him again as long as you live.” 

They cared so little for plain Fact, these people, and were 
in that advanced state of degeneracy on the subject, that instead 
of being impressed by the speaker’s strong common sense, 
they look it in extraordinary dudgeon. The men muttered 
“ Shame ! ” and the women “ Brute ! ” and Sleary, in some haste, 
communicated the following hint, apart to Mr. Bounderby. 

“ I tell you what, Thquire. I'o thpeak plain to you, my 
opinion ith that you had better cut it thort, and drop it. 
They’re a very good-natur’d people, my people, but they’re 
accuthtomed to be quick in their movement ; and if you don’t 
act upon my advithe, I’m damned if I don’t believe they’ll pith 
you out o’ winder.” 

Mr. Bounderby being restrained by this mild suggestion, Mr. 
Gradgrind found an opening for his eminently practical exposi- 
tion of the subject. 

“ It is of no moment,” said he, “ whether this person is to be 
expected back at any time, or the contrary. He is gone away, 
and there is no present expectation of his return. That, 1 be- 
lieve, is agreed on all hands.” 

“ Thath agreed, Thquire. Thick to that ! ” From Sleary. 

“ Well then. I, who came here to inform the father of the 
poor girl, Jupe, that she could not be received at the school any 
more, in consequence of there being practical objections, into 
which I need not enter, to the reception there of the children 
of persons so employed, am prepared in these altered circum- 
stances to make a proposal. I am willing to take charge of 
)'Ou, Jupe, and to educate you, and provide for you. The only 


40 


I/A/W TIMES. 


condition (over and above your good behaviour) I make is, tliat 
you decide now, at once, whether to accompany me or remain 
here. Also, that if you accompany me now, it is understood 
that you communicate no more with any of your friends' who 
are here present. These observations comprise the whole of 
the case.” 

“ At the thame time,” said Sleary, “ I muth put in my word, 
Thquire, tho that both thides of the banner may be equally 
theen. If you like, Thethilia, to be prentitht, you know the 
natur of the work and you know your companionth. Emma 
Gordon, in whothe lap you’re a lying at prethent, would be a 
mother to you, and Joth’phine would be a thithther to you. I 
don’t pretend to be of the angel breed myself, and I don’t thay 
but what, when you mith’d your tip, you’d find me cut up rough, 
and thwear a oath or two at you. But what I thay, Thquire, 
ith, that good tempered or bad tempered, 1 never did a horthe 
a injury yet, no more than thwearing at him went, and that I 
don’t expect I thall begin otherwithe at my time of life, with a 
rider. I never wath much of a Cackler, Thquire, and I have 
thed my thay.” 

The latter part of this speech was addressed to Mr. Grad- 
grind, who received it with a grave inclination of his head, and 
then remarked : 

“The only observation I will make to you, Jupe, in the way 
of influencing your decision, is, that it is highly desirable to 
have a sound practical education, and that even your father 
himself (from what I understand) appears, on your behalf, to 
have known and felt that much.” ' 

The last words had a visible effect upon her. She stopped in 
her wild crying, a little detached herself from Emma Gordon, 
and turned her face full upon her patron. The v/hole company 
perceived the force of the change, and drew a long breath to- 
gether, that plainly said, “ she will go ! ” 

“Be sure you know your own mind, Jupe,” Mr. Gradgrind 
cautioned her ; “ I say no more. Be sure you know your own 
mind ! ” 

“ When father comes back,” cried the girl, bursting into tears 
again after a minute’s silence, “how will he ever find me if I go 
away ! ” 

“You may be quite at ease,” said Mr. Gradgrind, calmly ; 
he worked out the whole matter like a sum: “you mav be 
quite at ease, Jupe, on that score. In such a case, your father, 
I apprehend, must find out Mr. — ” 


TIMES. 


41 

“ Thleary. Thath my name, Thquire. Not athamed of it. 
Known all over England, and alwayih pay the ith way.” 

“ Must find out Mr. Sleary, who would then let him know 
where you went. I should have no power of keeping you 
against his wish, and he would have no difficulty at any time, 
in finding Mr. Thomas Gradgrind of Coketown. I am well 
known.” 

“Well known,” assented Mr. Sleary, rolling his loose eye. 

“You’re one. of the thort, Thquire, that keepth a prethiouth 
thight out money out of the houthe. But never mind that at 
prethent.” 

I'here was another silence ; and then she exclaimed, sobbing 
with her hands before her face, “ Oh give me my clothes, 
give me my clothes, and let me go away before I break my 
heart ! ” 

The women sadly bestirred themselves to get the clothes 
together — it was soon done, for they were not many — and to 
pack them in a basket which had oft^n travelled with them. 
Sissy sat all the time, upon the ground, still sobbing, and cov- 
ering her eyes. Mr. Gradgrind and his friend Bounderby stood 
near the door, ready to take her away. Mr. Sleary stood in 
the middle of the room, with the male members of the com- 
pany about him, exactly as he would have stood in the centre 
of the ring during his daughter Josephine’s performance. He 
wanted nothing but his whip. 

I'he basket packed in silence, they brought her bonnet to 
her, and smoothed her disordered hair, and put it on. Then 
they pressed about her, and bent over her in very natural atti- 
tudes, kissing and embracing her : and brought the children to 
take leave of her ; and were a tender-hearted, simple, foolish 
set of women altogether. 

“ Now, Jupe,” said Mr. Gradgrind. “ If you are quite de- 
termined, come ! ” 

But she had to take her farewell of the male part of the com- 
pany yet, and every one of them had to unfold his arms (for 
they all assumed the professional attitude when they found 
themselves near Sleary), and give her a parting kiss — Master 
Kidderminster excepted, in whose young nature there was an 
original flavour of the misanthrope, who was also known to 
have harboured matrimonial views, and who moodily withdrew. 
Mr. Sleary was reserved until the last. Opening his arms wide 
he took her by both her hands, and would have sprung her up 
and down, after the riding-master manner of congratulating 
young ladies on their dismounting from a rapid act ; but there 


//A/^D TIMES. 


was no rebound in Sissy, and slije only stood before him cry- 
ing. 

“ Good l^ye, my dear ! ” said Sleary. “ You’ll make your 
fortun, I hope, and none c^f our poor folkth will ever trouble 
you, I’ll pound it. I with your father hadn’t taken hith dog 
with him ; ith a ill-conwenienth to have the dog out of the billth. 
But on thecond thoughth, he wouldn’t have performed without 
hith mathter, tho ith ath broad ath ith long ! ” J 

With that he regarded her attentively with his ‘fixed eye, sur- 
veyed his company with his loose one, kissed her, shook his 
head, and handed her to Mr. Gradgrind as to a horse. 

“ There the ith, Thquire,” he said, sweeping her with a pro- 
fessional glance as if she were being adjusted in her seat, “ and 
the’ll do you juth tithe. Good bye, Thethilia ! ” 

“ Good bye, Cecilia ! ” “ Good bye. Sissy ! ” “ God bless 

you, dear ! ” In a variety of voices from all the room. 

But the riding-master eye had observed tlie bottle of the nine 
oils in her bosom, and he now interposes with “ Leave the bot- 
tle, my dear ; ith large to carry ; it will be of no uthe to you 
now. Give it to me I ” 

“ No, no ! ” she said, in another burst of tears. “ Oh no ! 
Pray let me keep it for father till he comes back ! He will 
want it when he comes back. He had never thought of going 
away, when he sent me for it. I must keep it for him, if you 
please ! ” 

“Tho be it, liiy dear. (You thee how it ith, Thquire!) 
Farewell, Thethilia ! My latht w’ordth to you ith thith, Thtick 
to the termth of your engagement, be obedient to the Thquire, 
and forget uth. But if, when you’re grown up and married and 
well off, you come iqjon any horthe riding ever, don’t be hard 
upon it, don’t be croth with it, give it a Bethpeak if you can, 
and tbmk you might do Avurth. People must be amuthed, 
Thquire, thomehow,” continued Sleary, rendered more pursy 
than ever, by so much talking ; “ they can’t be alwayth a work- 
ing, nor yet they can’t be alwayth a learning. Make the betht 
of uth ; not the wurtht. I’ve got my living out of the horthe- 
riding all my life, I know ; but I conthider that I lay down the 
philothophy of the thubject when I thay to you, Thquire, make 
the betht of uth : not the wurtht I ” 

The Sleary philosophy was propounded as they went down- 
stairs ; and the fixed eye of Philosophy — and its rolling eye, too 
— soon lost the three figures and the basket in the darkness of 
the street. 


//A/^D TIMES. 


43 


CHAPTER VIT. 

Mrs. Sparsit, 

R. BOUNDERBY being a bachelor, an elderly lady 
presided over his establishment, in consideration of a 
certain annual stipend! Mrs. Sjiarsit was this lady’s 
name ; and she was a prominent figure in attendance 
on Mr. Bounderby’s car, as it rolled along in triumph with the 
Bully of humility inside. 

For, Mrs. Sparsit had not only seen different days, but was 
highly connected. She had a great aunt living in these very 
times called lady Scadgers. Mr. Sparsit, deceased, of whom 
she was the relict, had been by the mother’s side what Mrs. 
Sparsit still called “ a Powler.” Strangers of limited informa- 
tion and dull apprehension were sometimes observed not to 
know what a Powler was, and even to appear uncertain whether 
it might be a business, or a political party, or a profession ol 
faith. The better class of minds, however, did not need to be 
informed that the Powlers were an ancient stock, who could 
trace themselves so exceedingly far back that it was not surpris- 
ing if they sometimes lost themselves — which they had rather 
frequently done, as respected horseflesh, blind-hookey, Hebrew 
monetary transactions, and the Insolvent Debtors Court. 

The late Mr. Sparsit, being by the mother’s side a Powler, 
married this lady, being by the father’s side a Scadgers. Lady 
Scadgers (an immensely fat old woman, with an inordinate ap- 
])etite for butcher’s meat, and a mysterious leg which had now 
refused to get out of bed for fourteen years) contrived the mar- 
riage, at a period when Sparsit was just of age, and chiefly no- 
ticeable for a slender body, weakly supported on two long slim 
props, and surmounted by no head worth mentioning. He 
inherited a fair fortune from his uncle, but owed it all before he 
came into it, and spent it twice over immediately afterwards. 
Thus when he died, at twenty-four (the scene of his decease, 
Calais, and the cause brandy), he did not leave his widow, from 
whom he had been separated soon after the honeymoon, in af- 
fluent circumstances. That bereaved lady, fifteen years older 
than he, fell presently at deadly feud with her only relative, 
Lady Scadgers ; and, partly to sjute her ladyship, and partly to 
maintain herself, went out at a salary. And here she was now, 
in her elderly days, with the Coriolanian style of nose and the 



44 


//AA‘D TIMES. 


dense black eyebrows which had captivated Sparsit, making Mr. 
Lounderby’s tea as he took his breakfast. 

If Bounderby had been a Conqueror, and Mrs. Sparsit a cap- 
tive Princess whom he took about as a feature in his state-pro- 
cessions, he could not have made a greater flourish with her 
than he habitually did. Just as it belonged to his boastfulness 
to depreciate his own extraction, so it belonged to it to exalt 
Mrs. Sparsit’ s. In the measure that he would not allow his 
own youth to have been attended by a single favourable circum- 
stance, he brightened Mrs. Sparsit’s juvenile career with every 
possible advantage, and showered wagon-loads of early roses 
all over that lady’s path. “ And yet, sir,” he would say, “how 
does it turn out after all ? Why here she is at a hundred a year 
(I give her a hundred, which she is pleased to term handsome), 
keeping the house of Josiah Bounderby of Coketown ! ” 

Nay, he made this foil of his so very widely known, that third 
parties took it up, and handled it on some occasions with con- 
siderable briskness. It was one of the most exasperating attri- 
butes of Bounderby, that he not only sang his own praises but 
stimulated other men to sing them. There was a moral infec- 
tion of clap-trap in him. Strangers, modest enough elsewhere, 
started up at dinners in Coketown, and boasted, in quite a 
rampant way, of Bounderby. They made him out to be the 
Royal arms, the Union-Jack, Magna Charta, John Bull, Habeas 
Corpus, the Bill of Rights, an Englishman’s house is his castle. 
Church and State, and God save the Queen, all put together. 
And as often (and it was very often) as an orator of this kind 
brought into his peroration. 

Princes and Lords may flourish or may fade, 

A breath can make them, as a breath has made,” 

— it was, for certain, more or less understood among the com- 
pany that he had heard of Mrs. Sparsit. 

“Mr. Bounderby,” said Mrs. Sparsit, “you are unusually 
slow, sir, with your breakfast this morning.” 

“ Why, ma’am,” he returned, “ I am thinking about Tom 
Gradgrind’s whim;” Tom Gradgrind, for a bluff independent 
manner of sjjeaking — as if somebody were always endeavouring 
to bribe him with immense sums to say Thomas, and he 
wouldn’t; “Tom Gradgrind’s whim, ma’am, of bringing up 
the tumbling-girl.” 

“ The girl is now waiting to know,” said Mrs. Sparsit, 
“ whether she is to go straight to the school, or up to the 
I^odge.” 


I/A/^n TIMES. 


45 - 


“ She must wait, ma’am,” answered Rounderby, “ till I know 
myself. - We shall have Tom Gradgrind down here presently, 

I suppose. If he should wish her to remain here a day or two 
longer, of course she can, ma’am.” 

“ Of course she can if you wish it, Mr. Rounderby.” 

“ I told him I would give her a shake-down here, last night, 
in order that he might sleep on it before he decided to let her 
have any association with Louisa.” 

“ Indeed, Mr. Rounderby ? Very thoughtful of you ! ” 

Mr. Sparsit’s Coriolanian nose underwent a slight expansion 
of the nostrils, and her black eyebrows contracted as she took 
a si}) of tea. 

*‘It’s tolerably clear to said Rounderby, “that the little - 
puss can get small good out of such companionship.” 

“ Are you speaking of young Miss Gradgrind, Mr. Bound- 
erby ? ” 

“ Yes, ma’am, I am speaking of Louisa.” 

“Your observation being limited to ‘little puss,’ ” said Mrs. 
Sparsit, “ and there being two little girls in question, I did not 
know which might be indicated by that expression.” 

“ Louisa,” repeated Mr. Rounderby. “ Louisa, Louisa.” 

“You are quite another father to Louisa, sir.” Mrs. Sparsil 
took a little mbre tea ; and, as she bent her again contracted 
eyebrows over her steaming cup, rather looked as if her classi- 
cal countenance were invoking the infernal gods. 

“ If you had said I was another father' to Tom — young Tom, 

I mean, not my friend Tom Gradgrind — you might have been 
nearer the mark. I am going to take young Tom into my of- 
fice. Going to have him under my wing, ma’am.” 

“Indeed? Rather young for that, is he not, sir?” Mrs. 
Sparsit’s “sir,” in addressing Mr. Rounderby, was a word of 
ceremony, rather exacting consideration for herself in the use, 
than honouring him. 

“ I’m not going to take him at once ; he is to finish his edu- 
cational cramming before then,” said Rounderby. “ By the 
Lord Harry, he’ll have enough of it, first and last ! He’d open 
his eyes, that boy would, if he knew how empty of learning my 
young maw was, at his time of life.” Which, by the by, he 
probably did know, for he had heard of it often enough. “ Rut 
it’s extraordinary the difficulty I have on scores of such subjects, 
in. speaking to any one on equal terms. Here, for example, I 
have been speaking to you this morning about tumblers. Why, 
what 6.0 you know about tumblers ? At the time when, to have 
been a tumbler in the mud of the streets, would have been a 


JIA/^D TIMES, 


. 46 

godsend to me, a prize in the lottery to me, you were at the 
Italian Opera. You were coming out of the Italian Opera, 
ma’am, in white satin and jewels, a blaze of splendour, when I 
hadn’t a penny to buy a link to light you.” 

“ I certainly, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a dignity 
serenely mournful, “ was familiar with the Italian Opera at a 
very early age.” 

“Egad, ma’am, so was I,” said Bounderby, “ — with the 
wrong side of it. A hard bed the pavement of it’s Arcade used 
to make, I assure you. People like you, ma’am, accustomed 
from infancy to lie on Down feathers, have no idea how hard a 
paving-stone is, without trying it. No, no, it’s of no use my 
talking to you about tumblers. I should s[)eak of foreign 
dancers, and the West End of London, and May Fair, and lords 
and ladies and honourables.” 

“I trust, sir,” rejoined Mrs. Sparsit, with decent resignation, 
“ it is not necessary that you should do anything of that kind. 
1 hope I have learnt how to accommodate myself to the changes 
of life. If I have acquired an interest in hearing of your in- 
structive experiences, and can scarcely hear enough of them, I 
claim no merit for that, since I believe it is a general senti- 
ment.” 

“ Well, ma’am,” said her patron, “ perhaps some people may 
be pleased to say that they do like to hear, in his own unj)ol- 
ished way, what Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, has gone 
through. But you must confess that you were born in the lap 
of luxury, yourself Come, ma’am, you know you were born 
in the lap of luxury.” 

“ I do not, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit with a shake of her 
head, “ deny it.” 

Mr. Bounderby was obliged to get up from table, and stand 
\yith his back to the fire, looking at her ; she was such an en- 
hancement of his position. 

“ And you were in crack society. Devilish high society,” he 
said, warming his legs. 

“ It is true, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, with an affectation of 
humility the very opposite of his, and therefore in no danger of 
jostling it. 

“You were in the tiptop fashion, and all the rest of it,” said 
Mr. Bounderby. 

“ Yes, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a kind of social widow- 
hood upon her. “It is unquestionably true.” 

Mr. Bounderby, bending himself at the knees, literally em- 
braced his legs in his great satisfaction and laughed aloud. Mr. 


HARD TIMES. 


47 

and Miss Gradgrind being then announced, he received the 
former with a shake of the hand, and the latter with a kiss. 

“Can Jupe be sent here, Bounderby ? ” asked Mr. Grad- 
grind. 

Certainly. So Jupe was sent there. On coming in, she 
curtseyed to Mr. Bounderby, and to his friend Tom Gradgrind, 
and also to Louisa ; but in her confusion unluckily omitted Mrs. 
Sparsit. Observing this, the blustrous Bounderby had the fol- 
lowing remarks to im^ke : 

“ Now, I tell you what, my girl. The name of that lady by 
the teapot, is Mrs. Sparsit. That lady acts as mistress of this 
house, and she is a highly connected lady. Consequently, if 
ever you come again into any room in this house, you will make 
a short stay in it if you don’t behave towards that lady in your 
most respectful manner. Now, 1 don’t care a button what you 
do to 7He, because I don’t affect to be anybody. So far from 
having high connections 1 have no connections at all, and I 
come of the scum of the earth. But towards that lady, I do care 
what you do;- and you shall do what is deferential and respect 
fill, or you shall not come here.” 

“I hope, Bounderby,” said Mr. Gradgrind, in a conciliatory 
voice, “ that this was merely an oversight,” 

“ My friend Tom Gradgrind suggests, Mrs, Sparsit,” said 
Bounderby, “that this was merely an oversight. Very likely. 
However, as you are aware, ma’am, 1 don’t allow of even over- 
sights towards you.” 

“ You are very good indeed, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, 
shaking her head with her State humility. “ It is not worth 
speaking of.” 

Sissy, who all this time had been faintly excusing herself with 
tears in her eyes, was now waved over by the master of the 
house to Mr. Gradgrind. She stood, looking intently at him, 
and I.ouisa stood coldly by, with her eyes upon the ground, 
while he proceeded thus : 

“Jupe, I have made up my mind to take you into my house ; 
and, when you are not in attendance at the school, to employ 
you about Mrs. Gradgrind, who is rather an invalid. I have ex- 
plained to Miss Louisa — this is Miss Louisa — the miserable but 
natural end of your late career ; and you are to expressly un- 
derstand that the whole of that subject is past, and is not to be 
referred to any more. PVom this time you begin your history. 
You are, at present, ignorant, 1 know.” 

“ Yes, sir, very,” she answered, curtseying. 

“1 shall have the satisfaction of causing you to be strictly 


48 


HARD TIMES. 


educated ; and you will be a living proof to all who come into 
communication with you, of the advantages of the training you 
will receive. You will be reclaimed and formed. You have 
been in the habit now of reading to your father, and those peor 
pie I found you among, I dare say?" said Mr. Gradgrind, 
beckoning her nearer to him before he said so, and dropping 
his voice. 

“Only to father and Merrylegs, sir. At least I mean to' 
father, when Merrylegs was always there." 

“Never mind Merrylegs, Jupe," said Mr. Gragdrind, with a 
passing frown. “I don’t ask about him. I understand you to 
.have been in the habit of reading to your father?" 

“ O yes, sir, thousands of times. They were the happiest — 
O, of all the happy times we had together, sir ! ” 

It was only now when her sorrow broke out, that Louisa 
looked at her. 

“And what,” asked Mr. Gradgrind, in a still lower voice, 
“ did you read to your father, Jupe?” 

“ About the Fairies, sir, and the Dwarf, and the Hunchback, 
and the Genies," she sobbed out : “ and about — " 

“ Hush ! " said Mr. Gradgrind, “ that is enough. Never 
breathe a word of such destructive nonsense any more. 
Bounderby, this is a case of rigid training, and 1 shall observe 
it with interest." 

“ Well," returned Mr. Bounderby, “ I have given you my 
opinion already, and I shouldn’t do as you do. But, very well, 
very well. Since you are bent upon it, very well ! " 

So, Mr. Gradgrind and his daughter took Cecilia Jupe off 
with them to Stone Lodge, and on the way Louisa never spoke 
one word, good or bad. And Mr. Bounderby went about his 
daily pursuits. And Mrs. Sparsit got behind her eyebrows and 
meditated in the gloom of that-retreat, all the evening. 


% 

CHAPTER VHI. 

Never Wonder. 

5T us strike the key-note again, before pursuing the 
tune. When she was half* a dozen years younger, 
Louisa had been overheard to begin a conversation 
with her brother one day, by saying “Tom, I wonder’’ 
— upon which Mr. Gradgrind, who was the person overhearing. 



HARD TIMES. 


49 

Stepped forth into the light, and said ‘^Louisa, never won- 
der ! ” 

Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of 
educating the reason without stooping to the cultivation of the 
sentiments and affections. Never wonder. By means of ad- 
dition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, settle everything 
somehow, and never wonder. Bring to me, says M‘Choakuin- 
child, yonder baby just able to walk, and I will engage that it 
shall never wonder. 

Now, besides very many babies just able to walk, there hap- 
pened to be in Coketown a considerable population of babies 
who had been walking against time towards the infinite world, 
twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years and more. These portentous 
infants being alarming creatures to stalk about in any human 
society, the eighteen denominations incessantly scratched one 
another’s faces and pulled one another’s hair by way of agree- 
ing on the steps to be taken for their improvement — which they 
never did ; a surprising circumstance, when the happy adapta- 
tion of the means to the end is considered. Still, although they 
differed in every other particular, conceivable and inconceivable 
(especially inconceivable), they were pretty well united on the 
point that these unlucky infants were never to wonder. Body 
number one, said they must take everything on trust. Body 
number two, said they must take everything on political econ- 
omy. Body number three, wrote leaden little books for them, 
showing how the good grown-up baby invariably got to the 
Savings-bank, and the bad grown-up baby invariably got trans- 
ported. Body number four, under dreary pretences of being 
droll (when it was very melancholy indeed), made the shal- 
lowest pretences of concealing pitfalls of knowledge, into which 
it was the duty of these babies to be smuggled and inveigled. 
But, all the bodies agreed that they were never to wonder. 

There was a library in Coketown, to which general access was 
easy. Mr. Gradgrind greatly tormented his mind about what 
the people read in this library : a point whereon little rivers of 
tabular statements periodically flowed into the howling ocean 
of tabular statements, which no diver ever got to any depth in 
and came up sane. It was a disheartening circumstance, but 
a melancholy fact, that even these readers persisted in wondering. 
They wondered about human nature, human passions, human 
hopes and fears, the struggles, triumphs and defeats, the cares 
and joys and sorrows,' the lives and deaths, of common men and 
women ! They sometimes, after fifteen hours’ work, sat down 
to read mere fables about men and women, more or less like 
3 


50 


TIMES. 


themselves, and about children, more or less like their own. 
They took DeFoe to their bosoms, instead of Euclid, and seemed 
to be on the whole more comforted by Goldsmith then by 
Cocker. Mr. Gradgrind was for ever working, in print and out 
of print, at this eccentric sum, and he never could make out 
how it yielded this unaccountable product. 

“ I am sick of my life. Loo. I hate it altogether, and I hate 
everybody except you,” said the unnatural young Thomas Grad- 
grind in the hair-cutting chamber at twilight. 

• “You don’t hate Sissy, Tom?” 

“ I hate to be obliged to call her Jupe. And she hates me,” 
said Tom moodily. 

“No she does not, Tom, I am sure.” 

“She must,” said Tom. “She must just hate and detest the 
whole set-out of us. They’ll bother her head off, I think, before 
they have done with her. Already she’s getting as pale as wax, 
and as heavy as — I am.” 

Young Thomas expressed these sentiments sitting astride of 
a chair before the fire, with his arms on the back, and his sulky 
face on his arms. His sister sat in the darker corner by the 
fireside, now looking at him, now looking at the bright sparks- 
as they dropped upon the hearth. 

“As to me,” said Tom, tumbling his hair all manner of ways 
with his sulky hands, “ I am a Donkey, that’s what / am. I 
am as obstinate as one, I am more stupid than one, I get as 
much pleasure as one, and I should like to kick like one.” 

“Not me, I hope, Tom ? ” 

“No, Loo; I wouldn’t hurt you. I made an exception of 
you at first. I don’t know what this — jolly old — Jaundiced 
Jail,” Tom had paused to find a sufficiently complimentary and 
expressive name for the parental roof, and seemed to relieve 
his mind for a moment by the strong alliteration of this one 
“ would be without you.” 

'“ Indeed, Tom ? Do you really and truly say so ?” 

“ Why, of course I do. What’s the use of talking about- it !” 
returned Tom, chafing his face on his coat-sleeve, as if to mor- 
tify his flesh, and have it in unison with his spirit. 

“ Because, Tom,” said his sister, after silently watching the 
sparks awhile, “ as I get older, and nearer growing up, I often 
sit wondering here, and think how unfortunate it is for me that 
I can’t reconcile you to home better than I am able to do. I 
don’t know what other girls know. I can’t play to you, or sing 
to you. I can’t talk to you so as to lighten your mind, for I 
never see any amusing sights or read any amusing books that 


JIARD TIMES. 


51 

it would be a pleasure or relief to you to talk about, when you 
are tired.’' 

“ Well, no more do I. I am as bad as you in that respect ; 
and 1 am a Mhle too, which you’re not. If father was deter- 
mined to make me either a Prig or a Mule, and I am not a 
Prig, why, it stands to reason, I must be a Mule. And so I 
am,” said Tom, desperately. 

“ It’s a great pity,” said Louisa, after another pause, and 
sj^eaking thoughtfully out of her dark corner ; it’s a great pity, 
Tom. It’s very unfortunate for both of us.” 

“ Oh ! You,” said Tom ; “ you are a girl. Loo, and a girl 
comes out of it better than a boy does. I don’t miss anything 
in you. You are the only pleasure I have — you can brighten 
even this place — and you can always lead me as you like.” 

“ You are a dear brother, Tom ; and while you think I can 
do such things, I don’t so much mind knowing better. Though 
I do know better, Tom, and am very sorry for it.” She came 
and kissed him, and went back into a corner again. 

“ I wish I could collect all the Facts we hear so much 
about,” said Tom, spitefully setting his teeth, “ and all the Fig- 
ures, and all the people who found them out ; and I wish I 
could put a thousand barrels of gunpowder under them, and 
blow them all up together ! However, when I go to live with 
old Bounderby, I’ll have my revenge.” 

“ Your revenge, Tom ? ” 

I mean. I’ll enjoy myself a little, and go about and see 
something and hear something. I’ll recompense myself for the 
way in which I have been brought up.” 

“ But don’t disappoint yourself beforehand, Tom. Mr. 
Bounderby thinks, as father thinks, and is a great deal rougher, 
and not half so kind.” 

“Oh;” said Tom, laughing; “I don’t mind that. I shall 
very well know how to manage and smoothe old Bounderby ! ” 

Their shadows were defined upon the wall, but those of the 
high presses in the room were all blended together on the wall 
and on the ceiling, as if the brother and sister were overhung 
by a dark cavern. Or, a fanciful imagination — if such treason 
could have been there — might have made it out to be the 
shadow of their subject, of its lowering association with their 
future. 

“ What is your great mode of smoothing and managing, Tom ? 
Is it a secret ? ” 

“ Oh ! ” said Tom, “ if it is a secret, it’s not far off. It’s you. 
You are his little pet, you are his favourite; he’ll do anything 


52 


TIMES. 


for you. When he says to me what I don’t like, I shall say to 
him, ‘ My sister Loo will be hurt and disappointed, Mr. Bound- 
erby. She always used to tell me she was sure you would be 
easier with me than this.’ That’ll bring him about, or nothing 
will.” 

After waiting for some answering remark, and getting none, 
Tom wearily relapsed into the present time, and twined him- 
self yawning round and about the rails of his chair, and rum- 
pled his head more and more, until he suddenly looked up, and 
asked : 

“ Have you gone to sleep. Loo ? ” 

“ No, Tom. I am looking at the fire.” 

“You seem to find more to look at in it than ever I could 
find,” said Tom. “Another of the advantages, I suppose, of 
being a girl.” 

“Tom,” enquired his sister, slowly, and in a curious tone, as 
if she were reading what she asked in the fire, and it were not 
quite plainly written there, “ do you look forward with any sat- 
isfaction to this change to Mr. Bounderby’s ?” 

“ Why, there’s one thing to be said of it,” returned Tom, 
pushing his chair from him, and standing up ; “ it will be getting 
away from home.” 

“ There is one thing to be said of it,” Louisa repeated in her 
-former curious tone; “it will be getting away from home. 
Yes.” 

“ Not but what I shall be very unwilling, both to leave you. 
Loo, and to leave you here. But I must go, you know, whether 
I like it or not ; and I had better go where I can take with 
me some advantage of your influence, than where I should lose 
it altogether. “ Don’t you see ? ” 

“ Yes, Tom.” 

The answer was so long in coming, though there was no in- 
decision in it, that Tom went and leaned on the back of her 
chair, to contemplate the fire which so engrossed her, from her 
point of view, and see what he could make of it. 

“Except that it is a fire,” said Tom, “it looks to me as stu- 
pid and blank as everything else looks. What do you see in it ? 
Not a circus ? ” 

“I don’t see anything in it, Tom, particularly. But since I 
have been looking at it, I have been wondering about you and 
me grown up.” 

“ Wondering again !” said Tom. 

“ I have such unmanageable thoughts,” returned his sister, 
“ that they will wonder.” 


//A/^D TIMES. 


53 


“ Then I beg of yon, Louisa,” said Mrs. Gradgrind, who had 
entered the door without being heard, “to do nothing of that 
description, for goodness’ sake, you inconsiderate girl, or I shall 
never hear the last of it from your father. And Thomas, it is 
really shameful, with my poor head continually wearing me out, 
that a boy brought up as you have been, and whose education 
has cost what yours has, should be found encouraging his sister 
to wonder, when he knows his father has expressly said that 
she is not to do it.” 

Louisa denied Tom’s participation in the oft'ence ; but her 
mother stopped her with the conclusive answer, “ Louisa, don’t 
tell me, in my state of health ; for unless you have been en- 
encoLiraged, it is morally and physically impossible that you could 
have done it.” 

“ I was encouraged by nothing, mother, but by looking at the 
red sparks dropping out of the fire, and whitening and dying. 
It made me think, after all, how short my life would be, and how 
little I could hope to do in it.” 

“Nonsense!” said_Mrs. Gradgrind, rendered almost ener- 
getic. “ Nonsense 1 Don’t stand there and tell me such stuff, 
Louisa, to my face, when you know very well that if it was 
ever to reach your father’s ears I should never hear the last 
of it. After all the trouble that has been taken with you I 
After the lectures you have attended, and the experiments you 
have seen ! After I have heard you myself, when the whole of 
my right side has been benumbed, going on with your master 
about combustion, and calcination, and calorification, and 1 may 
say every kind of ation that could drive a poor invalid dis- 
tracted, to hear you talking in this absurd way about sparks and 
ashes I I wish,” whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind, taking a chair 
and discharging her strongest point before succumbing under 
these mere shadows of facts, “ yes, I really do wish that I had 
never had a family, and then you would have known what it 
was to do without me ! ” 


54 


TIMES. 


CHAPTER IX. 

Stssys Progress, 

ISSY Jupe had not an easy time of it, between Mr. 
M‘Choakumchild and Mrs. Gradgrind, and was not with- 
out strong impulses, in the first months of her proba- 
tion, to run away. It hailed facts all day long so very 
hard, and life in general was opened to her as such a closely 
ruled ciphering-book, that assurely she would have run away, 
but for only one restraint. 

It is lamentable to think of ; but this restraint was the re- 
sult of no arithmetical progress, was self-imposed in defiance of 
all calculation, and went dead against any table of probabilities 
that any Actuary would have drawn up from the premises. The 
girl believed that her father had not deserted her ; she lived in the 
hope that he would come back, and in the faith that he would 
be made the happier by her remaining where she was. 

The wretched ignorance with which Jupe clung to this con- 
solation, rejecting the superior comfort of knowing, on a sound 
arithmetical basis, that her father was an unnatural vagabond, 
filled Mr. Gradgrind with pity. Yet, what was to be done? 
M‘Choakumchild reported that she had a very dense head for 
figures ; that, once possessed with a general ideaof the globe, she 
took the smallest conceivable interest in its exact measurements ; 
that she was extremely slow in the acquisition of dates, unless 
some pitiful incident happened to be connected therewith ; that 
she would burst into tears on being required (by the mental 
process) immediately to name the cost of two hundred and forty- 
seven muslin caps at fourteenpence halfpenny ; that she was as 
low down, in the school, as low could be ; that after eight weeks 
of induction into the elements of Political Economy, she had only 
yesterday been set right by a prattler three feet high, for return- 
ing to the question, “ What is the first principle of this science ? ” 
the absurd answer, “To do unto others as I would that they 
should do unto me.” 

Mr. Gradgrind observed, shaking his head, that all this was 
very bad ; that it showed the necessity of infinite grinding at 
the mill of knowledge, as per system, schedule, blue book, re- 
port, and tabular statements A to Z ; and that Jupe ^‘must be 
kept to it.” So Jupe was kept to it, and became low-spirited, 
but no wiser. 



//A/^D TIMES. 


55 


“ It would be a fine thing to be you, Miss Louisa ! ” she 
said, one night, when I.ouisa had endeavoured to make her per- 
plexities for next day something clearer to her. 

“ Do you think so ? ” 

“ I should know so much, Miss Louisa. All that is difficult 
to me now, would be so easy then.” 

“ You might not be the better for it. Sissy.” 

Sissy submitted, after a little hesitation, “I should not be the 
worse. Miss Louisa.” To which Miss Louisa answered, ‘‘I 
don’t know that.” 

There had been so little communication between these two 
— both because life at Stone Lodge went monotonously round 
like a piece of machinery which discouraged human interference, 
and because of the prohibition relative to Sissy’s past career — 
that they were still almost strangers. Sissy, with her dark eyes 
wonderingly directed to Louisa’s face, was uncertain whether to 
say more or to remain silent. , 

“ You are more useful to my mother, and more pleasant with 
her than I can ever be,” Louisa resumed. “You are pleas- 
anter to yoimself, than / am to my self.” 

“ But, if you please Miss Louisa,” Sissy pleaded, “ I am — O 
so stupid ! ” 

Louisa, with a brighter laugh than usual, told her she would 
be wiser by and by. 

“You don’t know,” said Sissy, half crying, “what a stupid 
girl I am. All through school hours I make mistakes. Mr. and 
Mrs. M‘Choakumchild call me up, over and over again, regu- 
larly to make mistakes. 1 can’t help them. They seem to come 
natural to me.” 

“Mr. and Mrs. M‘Choakumchild never make any mistakes 
themselves, I suppose. Sissy ? ” 

“ O no ! ” she eagerly returned. “ They know everything.” 

“ Tell me some of your mistakes.” 

“ I am almost ashamed,” said Sissy, with reluctance. “ But 
to-day, for instance, Mr. M/Choakumchild was explaining to us 
about Natural Prosperity.” 

“National, I think it must have been,” observed Louisa. 

“Yes, it was. — But isn’t it the same ?” she timidly asked. 

“ You had better say. National, as he said so,” returned 
Louisa, with her dry reserve. 

“ National Prosperity. ■ And he said. Now, this school-room 
is a Nation. And in this nation, there are fifty millions of 
money. Isn’t this a prosperous nation ? Girl number twenty, 
isn’t this a prosperous nation, and a’ n’t you in a thriving state ? ” 


55 


JIARD TIMES. 


“ What did you say ? ” asked T^ouisa. 

“ Miss Louisa, I said I didn’t know. I thought I couldn’t 
know whether it was a prosperous nation or not, and whether I 
was in a thriving state or not, unless I knew who had got the 
money, and whether any of it was mine. But that had nothing 
to do with it. It was not in the figures at all,” said Sissy, 
wiping her eyes. 

“That was a great mistake of yours,” observed Louisa. 

“ Yes, Miss Louisa, I know it was, now. Then Mr. M'Choak- 
iimchild said he would try me again. And he said. This school- 
room is an immense town, and in it there are a million of in- 
habitants, and only five-and-twenty are starved to death in^.the 
streets, in the course of a year. What is your remark on that 
proportion ? And my remark was — for I couldn’t think of a 
better one — that I thought it must be just as hard upon those 
who were starved, whether the others were a million, or a 
million million. And that was wrong too.” 

“ Of course it was.” 

“ Then Mr. M‘Choakumchild said he would try me once 
more. And he said. Here are the stutterings — ” 

“ Statistics,” said Louisa. 

“ Yes, Miss Louisa — they always remind me of stutterings, 
and that’s another of my mistakes — of accidents upon the sea. 
And I find (Mr. M‘Choakumchild said) that in a given time a 
hundred thousand persons went to sea on long voyages, and 
only five hundred of them were drowned or burnt to death. 
What 'is the percentage ? And I said. Miss ; ” here Sissy fairly 
sobbed as confessing with extreme contrition to her greatest 
error ; “ I said it was nothing.” 

“ Nothing, Sissy ? ” 

“Nothing, Miss — to the relations and friends of the people 
who were killed. I shall never learn,” said Sissy. “ And the 
worst of all is, that although my poor father wished me so much 
to learn, and although I am so anxious to learn, because he 
wished me to, I am afraid I don’t like it.” 

Louisa stood looking at the pretty modest head, as it drooped 
abashed before her, until it was raised again to glance at her 
face. Then she asked : 

. Did your father know so much himself, that he wished you 
to be well taught too. Sissy ? ” 

' Sissy hesitated before replying, and so plainly showed her 
sense that they were entering on forbidden ground, that Louisa 
added, “ No one hears us ; and if any one" did, I am sure no 
harm could be found in such an innocent question.” 


TIMES, 


57 


“ No, Miss Louisa,” answered Sissy, upon this encourage- 
ment, shaking her head ; “ father knows very little indeed. It’s 
as much as he can do to write ; and it’s more than people in 
general can do to read his writing. Though it’s plain to me'- . 

“ Your mother ? ” 

“ Father said she was quite a scholar. She died when I was 
born. She was ; ” Sissy made the terrible communication ner- 
vously ; “ she was a dancer.” 

“ Did your father love her ?” I.ouisa asked these questions 
with a strong, wild, wandering interest peculiar to her ; an inter- 
est gone astray like a banished creature, and hiding in solitary 
places. 

“ Oh yes ! As dearly as he loves me. Father loved me, 
first, for her sake. He carried me about with him when I was 
quite a baby. We have never been asunder from that time.” 

“ Yet he leaves you now. Sissy ? ” 

Only for my good. Nobody understands him as I do, no- 
body knows him as I do. When he left me for my good — he 
never would have left me for his own — I know he was almost 
broken-hearted with the trial. He will not be happy for a 
single minute, till he comes back.” 

“Tell me more about him,” said Louisa, “I will never ask 
you again. Where did you live ? ” 

“ We travelled about the country, and had no fixed place to 
live in. Father’s a;” Sissy whispered the awful word “a 
clown.” 

“ To make the people laugh? ” said Louisa, with a nod of in- 
telligence. 

“ Yes. But they wouldn’t laugh sometimes, and then father 
cried. Lately, they very often wouldn’t laugh, and he used to 
come home despairing. Father’s not like most. Those who 
didn’t know him as well as I do, and didn’t love him as dearly 
as 1 do, might believe he was not quite right. Sometimes they 
played tricks upon him ; but they never knew how he felt 
them, and shrunk up when he was alone with me. He was 
far, far timider than they thought ! ” 

And you were his comfort through everything? ” 

She nodded, with the tears rolling down her face. “ I hope 
so, and father said I was. It was because I grew so scared and 
trembling, and because he felt himself to be a poor, weak, 
ignorant, helpless man, (those used to be his words), that he 
wanted me so much to know a great deal, and be different from 
him. I used to read to him to cheer his courage, and he was 
very fond of that. They were wrong books — I am never to 
3 * 


58 


HARD TIMES. 


speak of them here — but we didn’t know there was any harm 
in them.” 

“ And he liked them ? ” said I.ouisa, with her searching gaze 
on Sissy all this time. 

“ O very much ! They kept him, many times, from what did 
him real harm. And often and often of a night, he used to for- 
get all his troubles in wondering whether the Sultan would let 
the lady go on with the story, or would have her head cut off 
before it was finished.” 

“ And your father was always kind? To the last?” asked 
Louisa ; contravening the great principle, and wondering very 
much. 

“ Always, always ! ” returned Sissy, clasping her hands. 
“ Kinder and kinder than I can tell. He was angry only one 
night, and that was not to me, but Merrylegs. Merrylegs ; ” 
she whispered the awful fact ; “is his performing dog.” 

“ Why was he angry with the dog ? ” Louisa demanded. 

“ Father, soon after they came home from performing, told 
Merrylegs to jump up on the backs of the two chairs and stand 
across them — which is one of his tricks. He looked at 
father, and didn’t do^ it at once. Everything of father’s 
had gone wrong that night, and he hadn’t pleased the ])ublic at 
all. He cried out that the very dog knew he was failing, and 
had no compassion on him. Then he beat the dog, and I was 
frightened and said, ‘Father, father! Pray don’t hurt the 
creature who is so fond of you I O Heaven forgive you, father, 
stop I ’ And he stopped, and the dog was bloody, and father 
lay down crying on the floor with the dog in his arms, and the 
dog licked his face.” 

Louisa saw that she was sobbing ; and going to her, kissed 
her, took her hand, and sat down beside her. 

“ Finish by telling me how your father left you. Sissy. Now 
that 1 have asked you so much, tell me the end. The blame, 
if there is any blame, is mine, not yours.” 

“'Dear Miss Louisa,” said Sissy, covering her eyes, and sob- 
bing yet ; “ I came home from the school that afternoon, and 
found poor father just come home too, from the booth. And 
he sat rocking himself over the fire, as if he was in pain. And 
I said, ‘ Have you hurt yourself, father ? ’ (as he did sometimes, 
like they all did,) and he said, ‘A little, my darling.’ And when 
I came to stoop down and look up at his face, I saw that he 
was crying. The more I spoke to him, the more he hid his 
face ; and at first he shook all over, and said nothing but ‘ My 
darling ; and ‘ My love I ’ ” 


59 


HARD TIMES. 

Here Tom came lounging in, and stared at the two with a 
coolness not particularly savouring of interest in anything but 
himself, and not much of that at present. 

“ I am asking Sissy a few questions, Tom,” observed his sis- 
ter. “You have no occasion to go away; but don’t interrupt 
us for a moment, Tom dear.” 

“ Oh ! very well ! ” returned Tom. “ Only father has brought 
old Bounderby home, and I want you to come into the draw- 
ing-room. Because if you come, there’s a good chance of old'' 
Bounderby’s asking me to dinner ; and if you don’t there’s 
none.” 

“ I’ll come directly.” 

“ I’ll wait for you,” said Tom, “ to make sure.” 

Sissy resumed in a lower voice. “At last poor father said 
that he had given no satisfaction again, and never did give any 
satisfaction now, and that he was a shame and disgrace, and I 
should have done better without him all along. I said all the 
affectionate things to him that came into my heart, and presently 
he was quiet, and I sat down by him, and told him all about 
the school and everything that had been said and done there. 
When 1 had no more left to tell, he put his arms round my 
neck, and kissed me a great many times. Then he asked me 
to fetch some of the stuff he used, for the little hurt he had had, 
and to get it at the best place, which was at the other end of 
town from there; and then, after kissing me again,. he let me 
go. When 1 had gone down-stairs, I turned back that I might 
be a little bit more company to him yet, and looked in at the 
door, and said, ‘ Father dear, shall I take M errylegs ? ’ Father 
shook his head and said, ‘ No, Sissy, no ; take nothing that’s 
known to be mine, my darling;’ and I left him sitting by the 
fire. Then the thought must have come upon him, poor, poor 
father ! of going away to try something for my sake ; for, when 
I came back, he was gone.” 

“ I say ! Look sharp for old Bounderby, Loo ! ” Tom' 
remonstrated. 

“ There’s no more to tell. Miss Louisa. I keep the nine oils 
ready for him and I know he will come back. Every letter 
that I see in Mr. Gradgrind’s hand takes my breath away and 
blinds my eyes, for I think it comes from father, or from Mr. 
Sleary about father. Mr. Sleary promised to write as soon as 
ever father should be heard of, and I trust to him to keep his 
word.” 

“ Do look sharp for old Bounderby, Loo ! ” said Tom, with 
an impatient whistle. “ He’ll be off if you don’t look sharp 1 ” 


6o 


HARD TIMES. 


After this, whenever Sissy dropped a curtsey to Mr. Grad- 
grind in the presence of his family, and said in a faltering way, 
“ I beg your pardon, sir, for being troublesome — but — have you 
had any letter yet about me?” Louisa would suspend the oc- 
cupation of the moment, whatever it was, and look for the re- 
ply as earnestly as Sissy did. And when Mr. Gradgrind regu- 
larly answered, “No, Jupe, nothing of the sort,” the trembling 
of Sissy’s lip would be repeated in Louisa’s face, and her eyes 
would follow Sissy with compassion to the door. Mr. Grad- 
grind usually improved these occasions by remarking, when she 
was gone, that if Jupe had been properly trained from an early 
age she would have demonstrated to herself on sound prin- 
ciples the baselessness of these fantastic hopes. Yet it did 
seem (though not to him, for he saw nothing of it) as if fantas- 
tic hope could take as strong a hold as Fact. 

This observation must be limited exclusively to his daughter. 
As to Tom, he was becoming that not unprecedented triumph of 
calculation which is usually at work on number one. As to 
Mrs. Gradgrind, if she said anything on the subject, she would 
come a little way out of her wrappers, like a feminine dormouse,- 
and say : 

“ Good gracious bless me, how my poor head is vexed and 
worried by that girl Jupe’s so perseveringly asking, over and 
over again, about her tiresome letters ! Upon my word and 
honour I seem to be fated, and destined, and ordained, to live 
in the midst of things that I am never to hear the last of. It 
really is a most extraordinary circumstance that it appears as if 
I never were to hear the last of anything ! ” 

At about this point, Mr. Gradgrind’s eye would fall upon 
her ; and under the influence of that wintry piece of fact, she 
would become torpid again. 


CHAPTER X. 

Stephen Blackpool. 


ENTERTAIN a weak idea that the English people 
are as hard worked as any people upon whom the sun 
shines. I acknowlege to this ridiculous idiosyncrasy, 
as a reason why I would give them a little more play 
In the hardest working part of Coketown ; in the innermost 



//ARD TIMES. 


6l 


fortifications of that ugly citadel, where Nature was as strongly 
bricked out as killing airs and gases were bricked' in ; at the 
heart of the labyrinth of narrow courts upon courts, and close 
streets upon streets, which had come into existence piecemeal, 
every piece in a violent hurry for some one man’s purpose, and 
the whole an unnatural family, shouldering, and trampling, and 
l)ressing one another to death ; in the last close nook of this 
great exhausted receiver, where the chimneys, for want of air 
to make a draught, were built an immense variety of stunted 
and crooked shapes, as though every house put out a sign of 
the kind of people who might be expected to be born in it ; 
among the multitude of Coketown, generically called “ the 
Hands,” — a race who would have found more favour with some 
])eople, if Providence had seen fit to make them only hands, or, 
like the lower creatures of the sea-shore, only hands and stom- 
achs — lived a certain Stephen Blackpool, forty years of age. 

Stephen looked older, but he had had a hard life. It is said 
that every life has its roses and thorns ; there seemed, how- 
ever, to have been a misadventure or mistake in Stephen’s 
case, whereby somebody else had become possessed of his roses 
and he had become possessed of the same somebody else’s 
thorns in addition to his own. He had known, to use his words, 
a peck of trouble. He was usually called Old Stephen, in a 
kind of rough homage to the fact. 

A rather stooping man, with a knitted brow, a pondering ex- 
pression of face, and a hard-looking head sufficiently capacious, 
on which his iron-grey hair lay long and thin. Old Stephen might 
have passed for a particularly intelligent man in his condition. 
Yet he was not. He took no place among those remarkable 
“ Hands,” who, piecing together their broken intervals of leisure 
through many years, had mastered difficult sciences, and acquired 
a knowledge of most unlikely things. He held no station 
among the Hands who could make speeches and carry on de- 
bates. Thousands of his compeers could talk much better than 
he, at any time. He was a good power-loom weaver, and a 
man of perfect integrity. What more he was, or what else he 
had in him, if anything, let him show for himself. 

The lights in the great factories, which looked, when they 
were illuminated, like Fairy palaces — or the travellers by ex- 
l)rcss-train said so — were all extinguished; and the bells had 
rung for knocking off for the night, and had ceased again ; and 
the^Hands, men and women, boy and girl, were clattering home. 
Old Stephen was standing in the street, with the odd sensation 
upon him which the stoppage of the machinery always produced 


62 


HARD TIMES. 


' — the sensation of its having worked and stopped in his own 
head. 

“ Yet I don’t see Rachael, still ! ” said he. 

It was a wet night, and many groups of young women passed 
him, with their shawls drawn over their bare heads and held 
close under their chins to keep the rain out. He knew Rachael 
well, for a glance at any one of these groups was sufficient to 
show him that she was not there. At last, there were no more 
to come ; and then he turned away, saying in a tone of disap- 
pointment, “Why, then, I ha’ missed her!” 

But, he had not gone the length of three streets, when he saw 
another of the shawled figures in advance of him, at which he 
looked so keenly that perhaps its mer^ shadow indistinctly re- 
flected on the wet pavement— if he could have seen it without 
the figure itself moving along from lamp to lamp, brightening 
and fading as it went — would have been enough to tell him who 
was there. Making his pace at once much quicker and much 
softer, he darted on until he was very near this figure, then fell 
into his former walk, and called “ Rachael ! ” 

She turned, being then in the brightness of a lamp ; and rais- 
ing her hood a little, showed a quite oval face, dark and rather 
delicate, irradiated by a pair of very gentle eyes, and further set 
off by the perfect order of her shining black hair. It was not a 
face in its first bloom ; she was a woman five and thirty years of 
age. 

“Ah, lad! ’Tis thou?” When she had said this, with a 
smile which would have been quite expressed, though nothing 
of her had been seen but her pleasant eyes, she replaced her 
hood again, and they went on together. 

“I thought thou wast ahind me, Rachael?” 

“No.” 

“ Early t’ night, lass ? ” 

“ ’Times I’m a little early, Stephen ; ’times a little late. I’m 
never to be counted on, going home.” 

“ Nor going t’other way, neither, ’t seems to me, Rachael ? ” 

“No, Stephen.” 

He looked at her with some disappointment in his face, but 
with a respectful and patient conviction that she must be right 
in whatever she did. The expression was not lost upon her ; 
she laid her hand lightly on his arm a moment as if to thank him 
for it. • 

“We are such true friends, lad, and such old friends, and get- 
ting to be such old folk, now.” 

“No, Rachael, thou’rt as young as ever thou wast.” 


HARD TIMES. 


63 


“ One of us would be puzzled how to get old, Stephen, with« 
out t’other getting so too, both being alive,” she answered, 
laughing; “but, any ways, we ’re such old friends, that t’ hide a 
word of honest truth fro’ one another would be a sin and a pity. 
’Tis better not to walk too much together. ’Times, yes ! 
'T would be hard, indeed, if ’twas not to be at all,” she said, 
with a cheerfulness she sought to communicate to him. 

“’Tis hard, anyways, Rachael.” 

“Try to think not ; and ’twill seem better.” 

“ I’ve tried a long time, and ’ta’nt got better. But' thou’rt 
right; ’tmight mak fok talk, even of thee. Thou hast been that 
to me, Rachael, through so many year : thou hast done me so 
much good, and heartened of me in that cl^eering way, that thy 
word is a law to me. Ah lass, and a bright good law ! Better 
than some real ones.” 

“ Never fret about* them, Stephen,” she answered quickly, and 
not without an anxious glance at his face. “ Let the laws be.” 

“ Yes,” he said, with a slow nod or two. “ Let ’em be. Let 
everything be. Let all sorts alone. ’Tis a muddle, and that’s 
aw.” 

“ Always a muddle ? ” said Rachael, with another gentle 
touch upon his arm, as if to recall him out of the thoughtfulness, 
in which he was biting the long ends of his loose neckerchief as 
he walked along. The touch had its instantaneous effect. He 
let them fall, turned a smiling face upon her, and said, as he 
broke into a good-humoured laugh, “Ay, Rachael, lass, awlus 
a muddle. That’s where I stick, J come to the muddle many 
times and agen, and 1 never get beyond it.” 

They had walked some distance, and were near their own 
homes. The woman’s was the first reached. It was in one of 
the many small streets for which the favourite undertaker (who 
turned a handsome sum out of the one poor ghastly pomp of 
the neighbourhood) kept a black ladder, in order that those who 
had done their daily groping up and down the narrow stairs 
might slide out of this working world by the windows. She 
stopped at the corner, and putting her hand in his, wished him 
good night. 

“ Good night, dear lass; good night ! ” 

She went, with her neat figure and her sober womanly step, 
down the dark street, and he stood looking after her until she 
turned into one of the small houses. There was not a flutter 
of her coarse shawl, perhaps, but had its interest in this man’s 
eyes ; not a tone of her voice but had its echo in his innermost 
heart. 


64 


HARD TJMES. 


When she was lost to his view, he pursued his homeward 
way, glancing up sometimes at the sky, where the clouds were 
sailing fast and wildly. But, they were broken now, and the rain 
had ceased, and the moon shone — looking down the high chim- 
neys of Coketown on the deei) furnaces below, and casting Ti- 
tanic shadows of the steam engines at rest, upon the walls where 
they were lodged. The man seemed to have brightened with 
the night, as he went on. 

His home, in such another street as the first, saving that it 
was narrower, was over a little shop. How it came to pass 
that any people found it worth their while to sell or buy the 
wretched little toys, mixed up in its window with cheap news- 
papers and pork (tl'^ere was a leg to be raffled for to-morrow- 
night), matters not here. He took his end of candle from a 
shelf, lighted it at another end of candle on the counter, with- 
out disturbing the mistress of the shop wlio was asleep in her 
little room, and went up-stairs into his lodging. 

It was a room, not unacquainted with the black ladder under 
various tenants ; but as neat, at present, as such a room could 
be. A few books and writings were on an old bureau in a cor- 
ner, the furniture was decent and sufficient, and, though the at- 
mosphere was tainted, the room was clean. 

Going to the hearth to .set the candle down upon a round 
three-legged table standing there, he stumbled against some- 
thing. As he recoiled, looking down at it, it raised itself up 
into the form of a woman in a sitting attitude. 

“ Heaven’s mercy, woman ! ” he cried, falling farther off from 
the figure. “ Hast thou come back again ! ” 

Such a woman ! A disabled, drunken creature, barely able 
to preserve her sitting posture by steadying herself with one 
begrimed hand on the floor, while the other was so purposeless 
in trying to push away her tangled hair from her face, that it 
only blinded her the more with the dirt upon it. A creature so 
foul to look at, in her tatters, stains and splashes, but so much 
fouler than that in her moral infamy, that it was a shameful 
thing even to see her. 

After an impatient oath or two, and some stupid clawing of 
herself with the hand not necessary to her support, she got her 
hair away from her eyes sufficiently to obtain a sight of him. 
Then she sat swaying her body to and fro, and making gestures 
with her unnerved arm, which seemed intended as the accom- 
paniment to a fit of laughter, though her face was stolid and 
drowsy. 

“ Eigh lad? What, yo’r there?” 


Some hoarse sounds 


//AJ^D TIMES, 

meant for this, came mockingly out of her at last ; and her head 
dropped forward on her breast 

“ Back agen ? ” she screeched, after some minutes, as if he 
had that moment said it “Yes ! And back agen. Back agen 
ever and ever so often. Back ? Yes, back. Why not ? ” 
Roused by the unmeaning violence with which she cried it 
out, she scrambled up, and stood supporting herself with her 
shoulders against the wall ; dangling in one hand by the strings, 
a dunghill-fragment of a bonnet, and trying to look scornfully 
at him. 

“ I’ll sell thee off again, and I’ll sell thee off again, and I’ll 
sell thee off a score of times ! ” she cried, with something be- 
tween a furious menace and an effort at a defiant dance. 
“Come awa’ from th’ bed!” He was sitting on the side of 
it, with his face hidden in his hands. “ Come awa’ from ’t. 
’Tis mine, and I’ve a right to ’t 1 ” 

As she staggered to it, he avoided her with a shudder, and 
])assed — his face still hidden — to the opposite end of the room.. 
She threw herself upon the bed heavily, and soon was snoring- 
hard. He sunk into a chair, and moved but once all that 
night. It was to throw *a covering over her; as if his hands 
were not enough to hide her, even in the darkness. 


ff 


CHAPTER XI. 

No Way Out. 

HE Fairy palaces burst into illumination, before pale 
morning showed the monstrous serpents of smoke 
trailing themselves over Coketown. A clattering of 
clogs upon the pavement ; a rapid ringing of bells ; 
and all the melancholy inad elephants, polished and oiled up 
for the day’s monotony, were at their heavy exercise again. 

Stephen bent over his loom, quiet, watchful, and steady. 
A special contrast, as every man was in the forest of looms 
where Stephen worked to the crashing, smashing, tearing piece 
of meclianism at which he laboured. Never fear, good people 
of an anxious turn of mind, that Art will consign Nature to ob- 
livion. Set anywhere, side by side, the work of God and the 
work of man ; and the former, even though it be a troop of 



66 


//ARJD TIMES. 


Hands of very small account, will gain in dignity from the 
comparison. 

So many hundred Hands in this Mill ; so many hundred 
horse Steam Power. It is known, to the force of a single pound 
weight, what the engine will do ; but, not all the calculators of 
the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, 
for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decom- 
position of virtue into vice, or the reverse, at any single mo- 
ment in the soul of one of these its quiet servants, with the com- 
l)Osed faces and the regulated actions. There is no mystery 
in it ; there is an unfathomable mystery in the meanest of them, 
for ever. — Supposing we were to reserve our arithmetic for 
material objects, and to govern these awful unknown quanti- 
ties by other means ! 

The day grew strong, and showed itself outside even against 
the flaming lights within. The lights were turned out, and the 
work went on. The rain fell, and the Smoke-serpents, sub- 
missive to the curse of all that tribe, trailed themselves upon 
the earth. In the waste-yard outside, the steam from the es- 
cape pipe, the litter of barrels and old iron, the shining 
heaps of coals, the ashes everywhere, were shrouded in a veil 
of mist and rain. 

The work went on, until the noon-bell rang. More clatter- 
ing upon the pavements. The looms, and wheels, and Hands 
all out of gear for an hour. 

Stephen came o«t of the hot mill into the damp wind and 
cold wet streets, haggard and worn. He turned from his own 
class and his own quarter, taking nothing but a little bread as 
he walked along, towards the hill on which his principal em- 
ployer lived in a red house with black outside shutters, green 
inside blinds, a black street door, up two white steps, Bound- 
ERBY (in letters very like himself) upon a brazen plate, and a 
round brazen door-handle underneath it, like a brazen full- 
stop. 

. Mr. Bounderby was at his lunch. So Stephen had expected. 
Would his servant say that one of the Hands begged leave to 
■ speak to him ? Message in return, requiring name of such 
Hand. Stephen Blackpool. There was nothing troublesome 
against Stephen Blackpool ; yes, he might come in. 

'Stephen Blackpool in the parlour. Mr. Bounderby (whom 
he just knew by sight), at lunch on chop and sherry. Mrs. 
Sparsit netting at the fire-side, in a side-saddle attitude, with 
one foot in a cotton stirrup. It was a part, at once of Mrs. 
Sparsit’ s dignity and service, not to lunch. She supervised the 


I/A/HD TIMES, 67 

meal officially, but implied that in her own stately person she 
considered lunch a weakness. 

“Now Stephen,” said Mr. Bounderby, “what’s the matter 
with yott 1 ” 

Stephen made a bow. Not a servile one — these Hands 
will never do that ! Lord bless you, sir, you’ll never catch 
them at that, if they have been with you twenty years ! — and, 
as a complimentary toilet for Mrs. Sparsit, tucked his necker- 
chief ends into his waistcoat. 

“ Now you know,” said Mr. Bounderby, taking some sherry, 
“we have never had any difficulty with you, and you have 
never been one of the unreasonable ones. You don’t expect 
to be set up in a coach and six, and to be fed on turtle soup 
and venison, with a gold spoon, as a good many of ’em do ! ” 
Mr. Bounderby always represented this to be the sole, immedi- 
ate, and direct object of any Hand who was not entirely satis- 
fied ; “ and therefore I know already that you have not come 
here to niake a complaint. Now, you know, I am certain of 
that, beforehand.” 

“ No sir, sure I ha’ not coom for nowt o’ th’ kind.” . 

Mr. Bounderby seemed agreeably surprised, notwithstanding 
his previous strong conviction. “Very well,” he returned, 
“ You’re a steady Hand, and I was not mistaken. Now, let 
me hear what it’s all about. As it’s not that, let me hear what 
it is. What have you got to say ? Out with it, lad ! ” 

Stephen happened to glance towards Mrs. Sparsit. “ I can 
go, Mr. Bounderby, if you wish it,” said that self-sacrificing 
lady, making a feint of taking her foot out of the stirrup. 

Mr. Bounderby stayed her, by holding a mouthful of chop in 
suspension before swallowing it, and putting out his left hand. 
Then, withdrawing his hand and swallowing his mouthful of 
chop, he said to Stephen : 

“ Now you know, this good lady is a born lady, a high lady. 
You are not to suppose because she keeps my house for me, that 
she hasn’t been very high up the tree — ah, up at the top of the 
tree ! Now, if you have got anything to say that can’t be said 
before a born lady, this lady will leave the room. If what you 
have got to say can be said before a born lady, this lady will 
stay where she is.” 

“ Sir, I hope I never had nowt to say, not fitten for a born 
lady to year, sin’ I were born mysen,’ ” was the reply, accom- 
panied with a slight flush. 

“ Very well,” said Mr. Bounderby, pushing away his plate, 
and leaning back. “ Fire away ! ” 


68 


HARD' TIMES. 


“ I ha’ coom,” Stephen began, raising his eyes from the floor, 
after a moment’s consideration, “ to ask yo yor advice. I 
need’t overmuch. I were married on Eas’r Monday nineteen 
year sin, long and dree. She were a young lass — ])retty enow 
— wi’ good accounts of herseln. Well ! She went bad — soon. 
Not along of me. Gonnows I were not a unkind husband to 
her.” 

“ I have heard all this before,” said Mr. Bounderby. “ She 
took to drinking, left off working, sold the furniture, pawned 
the clothes, and played old Gooseberry.” 

“ I were patient wi’ her.” 

(“ The more fool you, I think,” said Mr. Bounderby, in con- 
fidence to his wine-glass.) 

“ 1 were very patient wi’ her. I tried to wean her fra’t 
ower and ower agen. I tried this, I tried that, I tried t’other. 
I ha’ gone home, many’s the time, and found all vanished as 
I had in the world, and her without a sense left to bless her- 
seln lying on bare ground. I ha’ dun’t not once, not twice 
— twenty time ! ” 

Every line in his face deepened as he said it, and put in its 
affecting evidence of the suffering he had undergone. 

“From bad to worse, from worse to worsen. She left me. 
She disgraced herseln everyways, bitter and bad. She coom 
back, she coom back, she coom back. What could I do t’ 
hinder her ? I ha’ walked the streets nights long, ere ever 
I’d go home. I ha’ gone t’ th’ brigg, minded to fling myseln 
ower, and ha’ no more on’t. 1 ha’ bore that much, that I 
were owd when I were young.” 

Mrs. Sparsit, easily ambling along with her netting-needles, 
raised the Coriolanian eyebrows and shook her head, as much 
as to say, “ The great know trouble as well as the small. 
Please to turn your humble eye in My direction.” 

“ I ha’ paid her to keep awa’ fra’ me. These five year I ha’ 
])aid her. I ha’ gotten decent fewtrils about me agen. I ha’ 
lived hard and sad, but not ashamed and fearfo’ a’ the minnits 
o’ my life. Last night, I went home. There she lay upon my 
har-stone ! There she is ! ” 

In the strength of his misfortune, and the energy of his dis- 
tress, he fired for the moment like a proud man. In another 
moment, he stood as he liad stood all the time— his usual stoop 
upon him ; his pondering face addressed to Mr. Bounderby, 
y/ith a curious expression on it, half shrewd, half perplexed, as 
if his mind were set upon unravelling something very difficult ; 
his hat held tight in his left hand, which rested on his hip ; his 


//AI^D TIMES. 


69 

right arm, with a rugged propriety aud force of action, very 
earnestly emphasising what he said : not least so when it al- 
ways paused, a little bent, but not withdrawn, as he paused. 

“ I was acquainted with all this, you know,” said Mr. Boun- 
derby, “ except the last clause, long ago. It’s a bad job ; that’s 
what it is. You had better have been satisfied as you were, and 
not have got married. However, it’s too late to say that.” 

“Was it an unequal marriage, sir, in point of years?” asked 
Mrs. Sparsit. 

“You hear what this lady asks. Was it an unequal marriage 
in point of years, this unlucky job of yours?” said Mr. Boun- 
derby. 

“ Not e’en so. I were one-and-twenty myseln ; she were 
twenty nighbut.” 

“ Indeed, sir ? ” said Mrs. Sparsit to her Chief, with great 
placidity. “ I inferred, from its being so miserable a marriage, 
that it was probably an unequal one in point of years.” 

Mr. Bounderby looked very hard at the good lady in a side^ 
long way that had an odd sheepishness about it. He fortified 
himself with a little more sherry. 

“Well? Why don’t you go on?” he then asked, turning 
rather irritably on Stephen Blackpool. 

“ I ha’ coom to ask yo, sir, how I am to be ridded o’ this 
woman.” Stephen infused a yet deeper gravity into the mixed 
expression of his attentive face. Mrs. Sparsit uttered a gentle 
ejaculation, as having received a moral shock. 

“ What do you mean ? ” said Bounderby, getting up to lean 
his back against the chimney-piece. “What are you talking 
about ? You took her for better for worse.” 

“ I mun’ be ridden o’ her. I cannot bear ’t nommore. I 
ha’ lived under ’t so long, for that I ha’ had’n the pity and 
comforting words o’ th’ best lass living or dead. Haply, but 
for her, I should ha’ gone hottering mad.” 

“ He wishes to be free, to marry the female of whom he 
speaks, I fear, sir,” observed Mrs. Sparsit in an undertone, and 
much dejected by the immorality of the people. 

“ I do. The lady says what’s right. I do. I were a coming 
to ’t. I ha’ read i’ th’ papers that great fok (fair faw ’em a’ ! 
I wishes ’em no hurt !) are not bonded together for better for 
worse so fast, but that they can be set free fro’ /Ae/r misfortnet 
marriages, an marry ower agen. When they dunnot agree, for 
that their tempers is ill-sorted, they has rooms o’ one kind an 
another in their houses, above a bit, and they can live asunders. 
We fok ha’ only one room, an we can’t. When that won’t do, 


70 


HARD TIMES. 


they ha’ gowd an other cash, an they can say, ‘ This for yo’, an 
Uiat for me,’ an they can go their separate ways. We can’t. 
Spite o’ all that, they can be set free for smaller wrongs than 
mine. So, I mun be ridden o’ this woman, and I want t’ know 
how?” 

“ No how,” returned Mr. Bounderby. 

“ If I do her any hurt, sir, there’s a law to punish me ?” 

“ Of course there is.” 

“ If I flee from her, there’s a law to punish me ? ” 

“ Of course there is.” 

“ If I marry t’oother dear lass, there’s a law to punish me?” 

“ Of course there is.” 

“ If I was to live wi’ her an not marry her — saying such a 
thing could be, which it never could or would, an her so good 
— there’s a law to punish me, in every innocent child belonging 
to me ? ” 

“Of course there is.” 

“Now, a’ God’s name,” said Stephen Blackpool, “show me 
the law to help me ! ” 

“ Hem ! There’s a sanctity in this relation of life,” said Mr. 
Bounderby, “ and — and — it must be kept up.” 

“ No no, dunnot say that, sir. ’Tan’t kep’ up that way. 
Not that way. ’Tis kep’ down that way. I’m a weaver, I were 
in a fact’ry when a chilt, but I ha’ gotten een to see wi’ and 
eern to year wi’. I read in th’ papers every ’Sizes, every Ses^ 
sions — and you read too — I know it ! — with dismay — how th’ 
supposed impossibility o’ ever getting unchained from one an- 
other, at any price, on any terms, brings blood upon this land, 
and brings many common married fok to battle, murder, and 
sudden death. Let us ha’ this, right understood. Mine’s a 
grievous case, an I want — if yo will be so good — t’know the 
law that helps me.” 

“ Now, I tell you what ! ” said Mr. Bounderby, putting his 
hands in his pockets. “ There is such a law.” 

Stei)hen, subsiding into his quiet manner, and never wander- 
ing in his attention, gave a nod. 

“ But it’s not for you at all. It costs money. It costs a 
mint of money.” 

“ How much might that be ?” Stephen calmly asked. 

“ Why, you’d have to go to Doctors’ Commons with a suit, 
and you’d have have to go to a court of Common Law with a 
suit, and you’d have to go to the House of Lords with a suit, 
and you’d have to get an Act of Parliament to enable you to 
marry again, and it would cost you (if it was a case of very 


HARD TIMES. 


71 

plain-sailing), I suppose from a thousand to fifteen hundred 
pounds,” said Mr. Bounderby. “ Perhaps twice the money.” 
“There’s no other law ?” 

“ Certainly not.” 

“ Why then, sir,” said Stephen, turning white, and motioning 
with that right hand of his, as if he gave everything to the four 
winds, a muddle. ’Tis just a muddle a’toogether, an the 

sooner I am dead, the better.” 

(Mrs. Sparsit again dejected by the impiety of the people.) 

“ Pooh, pooh ! Don’t you talk nonsense, my good fellow,” 
said Mr. Bounderby, “ about things you don’t understand ; and 
don’t you call the Institutions of your country a muddle, or 
you’ll get yourself into a real muddle one of these fine mornings. 
The institutions of your country are not your piece-work, and 
the only thing you have got to do, is, to mind your piece-work. 
You didn’t take your wife for fast and for loose ; but for better 
for worse. If she has turned out worse — why, all we have got 
to say is, she might have turned out better,” 

“’Tis a muddle,” said Stephen, shaking his head as he moved 
to the door. “ Tis a’ a muddle ! ” 

“Now, I’ll tell you what!” Mr. Bounderby resumed, as a 
valedictory address. “ With what I shall call your unhallowed 
opinions, you have been quite shocking this lady : who, as I 
have already told you, is a born lady, and who, as I have not 
already told you, has had her own marriage misfortunes to 
the tune of tens of thousands of pounds — tens of Thou-sands of 
Pounds I ” (he repeated it with great relish). ‘‘ Now, you have 
always been a steady Hand hitherto ; but my opinion is, and so 
I tell you plainly, that you are turning into the wrong road. 
You have been listening to some mischievous stranger or other — 
they’re always about — and the best thing you can do is, to come 
out of that. Now you know ; ” here his countenance expressed 
marvellous acuteness ; “ I can see as far into a grindstone as 
another man ; farther than a good many, perhaps, because I 
had my nose well kept to it when I was young. I see traces 
of the turtle soup, and venison, and gold spoon in this. Yes, I 
do ! ” cried Mr. Bounderby, shaking his head with obstinate 
cunning. “ By the Lord Harry, I do ! ” 

With a very different shake of the head and deep sigh, Stephen 
said, “Thank you, sir, I wish you good day.” So he left Mr. 
Bounderby swelling at his own portrait on the wall, as if he were 
going to explode himself into it ; and Mrs. Sparsit still ambling 
on with her foot in her stirrup, looking quite cast down by the 
popular vices. 


72 


HARD TIMES. 


CHAPTER XIL 
The Old Woman. 

LD STEPHEN descended the two white steps, shut- 
ting the black door with the brazen door-plate, by the 
aid of the brazen full-stop, to which he gave a parting 
polish with the sleeve of his coat, observing that his 
hot hand clouded it. He crossed the street with his eyes bent 
upon the ground, and thus was walking sorrowfully away, when 
he felt a touch upon his arm. 

It was not the touch he needed most at such a moment — the 
touch that could calm the wild waters of his soul, as the up- 
lifted hand of the sublimest love and patience could abate the 
raging of the sea — yet it was a woman’s hand too. It was an 
old woman, tall and shapely still, though withered by time, on 
whom his eyes fell when he stopped and turned. She was 
very cleanly and plainly dressed, had country mud upon* her 
shoes, and was newly come from a journey. The flutter of her 
manner, in the unwonted noise of the streets ; the spare shawl, 
carried unfolded on her arm ; the heavy umbrella, and little 
basket ; the loose long-fingered gloves, to which her hands were 
unused ; all bespoke an old woman from the country, in her 
plain holiday clothes, come into Coketown on an expedition of 
rare occurrence. Remarking this at a glance, with the quick 
observation of his class, Stephen Blackpool bent his attentive 
face — his face, which like the faces of many of his order, by dint 
of long working with eyes and hands in the midst of a prodigi- 
ous noise, had acquired the concentrated look with which we 
are familiar in the countenances of the deaf — the better to hear 
what she asked him. 

“ Pray, sir,” said the old woman, “ didn’t I see you come out 
of that gentleman’s house ? ” pointing back to Mr. Bounderby’s. 
“ I believe it was you, unless I have had the bad luck to mis- 
take the person in following?” 

“Yes, missus,” returned Stephen, “it were me.” 

“ Have you — you’ll excuse an old woman’s curiosity — have 
you seen the gentleman ?” 

“ Yes, missus.” 

“ And how did he look, sir ? Was he portly, bold, out-spoken, 
and hearty ? ” As she straightened her own figure, and held up 
her head in adapting her action to her words, the idea crossed 



HARD THfES. 


73 

Stephen that he had seen this old woman before, and had not 
quite liked her. 

“ Oh yes,” he returned, observing her more attentively, “ he 
were all that.” 

“ And healthy,” said the old woman, “ as the fresh wind ? ” 

“ Yes,” returned Stephen. “ He were ett’n and drinking — as 
large and loud as a Hummobee.” 

“Thank you!” said the old woman with infinite content.* 
“ Thank you ! ” 

He certainly never had seen this old woman before. Yet 
there was a vague remembrance in his mind, as if he had more 
than once dreamed of some old woman like her. 

She walked along at his side, and, gently accommodating him- 
self to her humour, he said Coketown was a busy place, was it 
not ? To which she answered “ Eigh sure ! Dreadful busy ! ” 
Then he said, she came from the country, he saw ? To which 
she answered in the affirmative. 

“ By Parliamentary, this morning. I came forty mile by 
Parliamentary this morning, and Pm going back the same, forty 
mile this afternoon. I walked nine mile to the station this 
morning, and if I find nobody on the road to give me a lift, I 
shall walk the nine mile back to-night. That’s j)retty well, sir, 
at my age I ” said the chatty old woman, her eye brightening 
with exultation. 

“’Deed ’tis. Don’t do’t too often, missus.” 

“ No, no. Once a year,” she answered, shaking her head. 
“ I spend my savings so, once every year. I come regular, to 
tramp about the streets, and see the gentlemen.” 

“ Only to see ’em ?” returned Stephen. 

“ That’s enough for me,” she replied, with great earnestness 
and interest of manner. “ I ask no more ! I have been stand- 
ing about on this side of the way, to see that gentleman,” turn- 
ing her head back towards IVlr. Bounderby’s again, “come out. 
But, he’s late this year, and 1 have not seen him. You came 
out instead. Now if I am obliged to go back without a glimpse 
of him — I only want a glimpse — well ! I have seen you, and 
you have seen him, and I must make that do.” Saying this, 
she looked at Stephen as if to fix his features in her mind, and 
as her eye was not so bright as it had been. 

With a large allowance for difference of tastes, and with all 
submission to the patricians ol Coketown, this seemed so extra- 
ordinary a source of interest to take so much trouble about, that 
it perpfexed him. But they were passing the church now, and 
his eye caught the clock, he quickened his pace. 

4 . 


74 


HARD times: 


He was going to his work ? the old woman said, quickening 
hers, too, quite easily. Yes, time was nearly out. On his tell- 
ing her where he worked, the old woman became a more singu- 
lar old woman than before. 

“An’t you happy? ” she asked him. 

“Why — there’s awrnost nobbody but has their troubles, 
missus.” He answered evasively, because the old woman'ap- 
peared to take it for granted that he would be very happy 
indeed, and he had not the heart to disappoint her. He knew 
that there was trouble enough in the world ; and if the old 
woman had lived so long, and could count upon his having 
so little, why so much the better for her, and none the worse for 
him. 

“ Ay ay ! You have your troubles at home, you mean ? ” she 
said. 

“ Times. Just now and then,” he answered slightly. 

“But, working under such a gentleman, they don’t follow you 
to the Factory ? ” 

No, no ; they didn’t follow him there, said Stephen. All 
correct there. Everything accordant there. (He did not go 
so far as to say, for her pleasure, that there was a sort of Divine 
Right there ; but, I have heard claims almost as magnificent of 
late years.) 

They were now in the black by-road near the place, and the 
Hands were crowding in. The bell was ringing, and the Serpent 
was a Serpent of many coils, and the Elephant was getting ready. 
The strange old woman was delighted with the very bell. It 
was the beautifullest bell she had ever heard, she said, and 
sounded grand ! 

She asked him, when he stopped goodnaturedly to shake 
hands with her before going in, how long he had worked there ? 

“ A dozen year,” he told her. 

“ I must kiss the hand,” said she. “ that has worked in this 
fine factory for a dozen years ! ” And she lifted it, though he 
would have prevented her, and put it to her lips. What har- 
mony, besides her age and her simplicity, surrounded her, he 
did not know, but even in this fantastic action there was a 
something neither out of time nor place : a something which it 
seemed as if nobody else could have made as serious, or done 
with such a natural and touching air. 

He had been ht his loom full half an hour, thinking about 
this old woman, when, having occasion to move round the loom 
for its adjustment, he glanced through a window which was in his 
corner, and saw hef still looking up at the pile of building, lost 


HARD TIMES. 


7S. 


in admiration. Heedless of the smoke and mud and wet, and 
of her two long journeys, she was gazing at it, as if the heavy 
thrum that issued from its many stories were proud music to 
her. 

She was gone by and by, and the day went after her, and the 
lights sprung up again, and the Express whirled in full sight of 
the Fairy Palace over the arches near : little felt amid the jar- 
ring of the machinery, and scarcely heard above its crash and 
rattle. I^ong before then his thoughts had gone back to the 
dreary room above the little shop, and to the shameful figure 
heavy on the bed, but heavier on his heart. 

Machinery slackened ; throbbing feebly like a fainting pulse ; 
stopi^ed. The bell again ; the glare of light and heat dispelled ; 
the factories, looming heavy in the black wet night — their tall 
chimneys rising up into the air like competing Towers of 
Babel. 

He had spoken to Rachael only last night, it was true, and 
had walked with her a little way ; but he had his new misfortune 
on him in which no one else could give him a moment’s relief, 
and, for the sake of it, and because he knew himself to want 
that softening of his anger which no voice but hers could eft'ect, 
he felt he might so far disregard what she had said as to wait for 
her again. He waited, but she had eluded him. She was gone. 
On no other night in the year could he so ill have spared her 
patient face. 

Oh ! better to have no home in which to lay his head, than to 
have a home and dread to go to it, through such a cause. Fie 
ate and drank, for he was exhausted — but he little knew or 
cared what ; and he wandered about in the chill rain, thinking 
and thinking, and brooding and brooding. 

No word of a new marriage had ever passed between them ; 
but Rachael .had taken great pity on him years ago, and to her 
alone he had opened his closed heart all this time, on the subject 
of his miseries ; and he knew very well that if he were free to 
ask her, she would take him. He thought of the home he might 
at that moment have been seeking with pleasure and pride : of 
the ditfe/ent man he might have been that night ; of the light- 
ness then in his now heav3^-laden breast ; of the then restored 
honor, self-respect, and tranquillity all torn to pieces. He 
thought of the waste of the best part of his life, of the change it 
made in his eharacter for the worse every day, of the dreadful 
nature of his existence, bound hand and foot, to a dead woman, 
and tormented by a demon in her shai)e. He thought of 
Rachael, how young when they were first brought together in 


76 


HARD TIMES. 


these circumstances, how mature now, how soon to grow old. 
He thought of the number of girls and women she had seen 
marry, how many homes with children in them she had seen 
grow up around her, how she had contentedly pursued her own 
lone quiet path — for him — and how he had seen sometimes a 
shade of melancholy on her blessed face, that smote him with 
remorse and despair. He set the picture of her up, beside the in- 
famous image of last night ; and thought. Could it be, that the 
whole earthly course of one so gentle, good, and self-denying, 
was subjugate to such a wretch as that ! 

Filled with these thoughts — so filled that he had an unwhole- 
some sense of growing larger, of being placed in some new and 
diseased relation towards the objects among which he passed, 
of seeing the iris round every misty light turn red — he went 
home for shelter. 


CHAPTER XHI. 

Rachael, 

CANDLE faintly burned in the window, to which the 
black ladder had often been raised for the sliding away 
of all that was most precious in this world to a striving 
wife and a brood of hungry babies ; and Stephen added 
to his other thoughts the stern reflection, that of all the casualties 
of this existence upon earth, not one was dealt out with so un- 
equal a hand as Death. The inequality of Birth was nothing 
to it. For, say that the child of a King and the child of a 
Weaver were born to-night in the same moment, what was that 
disparity, to the death of any human creature who was service- 
able to, or beloved by another, while this abandoned woman 
lived on ! 

From the outside of his home he gloomily passed to the in- 
side, with suspended breath and with slow footstep. He went 
up to his door and opened it, and so into the room. 

Quiet and peace were there. Rachael was there, sittino- bv 
the bed. ^ ^ 

She turned her head, and the light of her face shone in upon 
the midnight of his mind. She sat by the bed, watching and 
tending his wife. That is to say, he saw that some one lay 
there, and he knew too well it must be she ; but Rachael’s 
hands had j^ut a curtain up, so that she was screened from his 



//AJ^D TIMES. 


77 


eyes. Her disgraceful garments were removed, and some of 
Rachael’s were in the room. Everything was in its ])lace and 
order as he had always kept it, the little tire was newly trimmed, 
and the hearth was freshly swept. It appeared to him that he' 
saw all this in Rachael’s face, and looked at nothing besides. 

• While looking at it, it was shut out from his view by the softened 
tears that filled his eyes ; but not before he had seen how earn- 
estly she looked at him, and how her own eyes were filled too. 

She turned again towards the bed, and satisfying herself that 
all was quiet there, spoke in a low, calm, cheerful voice. 

“ I am glad you have come at last, Stephen. You are very 
late.” 

“ 1 ha’ been walking up an’ down.” 

“I thought so. But ’tis too bad a night for that. The rain 
falls very heavy, and the wind has risen.” 

The wind ? True. It was blowing hard. Hark to the 
thundering in the chimney, and the surging noise ! To have 
been out in such a wind, and not to have known it was blow- 
ing ! 

“ I have been here once before to-day, Stephen. Landlady 
came round for me at dinner-time. There was some one here who 
needed looking to, she said. And ’deed she was right. All 
wandering and lost, Stephen. Wounded too, and bruised.” 

He slowly moved to a chair and sat down, drooping his head 
before her. 

“ I came to do what little I could, Stephen ; first for that 
she worked with me when we were girls both, and for that you 
courted and married her when I was her friend — ” 

He laid his furrowed forehead on his hand, with a low groan. 

“And next, for that I know your heart, and am right sure 
and certain that ’tis far too merciful to let her die, or even 
so much as suffer, for want of aid. Thou knowest who said, 

‘ Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone at 
her ! ’ There have been plenty to do that. Thou art not the 
man to cast the last stone, Stephen, when she is brought so 
low.” 

“ O Rachael, Rachael ! ” 

“Thou hast been a cruel sufferer. Heaven reward thee ! ” she 
said, in compassionate accents. “ I am thy poor friend, with 
all my heart and mind.” 

The wounds of which she had spoken, seemed to be about 
the neck of the self-made outcast. She dressed them now, 
still without showing her. She steeped a piece of linen in a 
basin, into which she poured some liquid from a bottle, and 


78 


HARD TIMES. 


laid it with a gentle hand upon the sore. The three legged- 
table had been drawn close to the bedside, and on it there 
were two bottles. This was one. 

It was not so far off, but that Stephen, following her hands 
with his eyes, could read what was [)rinted on it, in large letters. 
He turned of a deadly hue, and a sudden horror seemed to fall 
upon him. 

will stay here, Stephen,” said Rachael, quietly resuming 
her seat, “ till the bells go Three. ’Tis to be done again at 
three, and then she may be left till morning.” 

“ But thy rest agen to-morrow’s work, my dear.” 

“ 1 slej)t sound last night. I can wake many nights, when I 
am put to it. ’Tis thou who art in need of rest — so white and 
tired. Try to sleep in the chair there, while I watch. Thou 
hadst no sleep last night, I can well believe. To-morrow’s 
work is far harder for thee than for me.” 

He heard the thundering and surging out of doors, and it 
seemed to him as if his late angry mood were going about try- 
ing to get at him. She had cast it oiit ; she would keep it out ; 
he trusted to her to defend him from himself. 

“ She don’t know me, Stephen ; she just drowsily mutters * 
and stares. I have spoken to her times and again, but she 
don’t notice! ’Tis as well so. When she comes to her right 
mind once more, I shall have done what I can, and she never 
the wiser.” 

“ How long, Rachael, is’t looked for, that she’ll be so?” 

“ Doctor said she would haply come to her mind to-mor- 
row.” 

His eyes again fell on the bottle, and a tremble passed over 
him, causing him to shiver in every limb. She thought he was 
chilled with tlie wet. “No,” he said ; “it was not that. He 
had had a fright.” 

“ A fright ? ” 

“ Ay, ay ! coming in. When I were walking. When I were 
thinking. When I — ” It seized him again ; and he stood up, 
holding by the mantle-shelf, as he pressed his dank cold hair 
down with a hand that shook as if it were palsied. 

Stephen ! ” 

She was coming to him, but he stretched out his arm to stop 
her. 

“No! Don’t please; don’t! Let me see thee setten by 
the bed. Let me see thee, a’ so good, and so forgiving. Let 
me see thee as I have seen thee when 1 coom in. I can never 
see thee better than so. Never, never, never ! ” 


I/AJ^D TIMES, 


79 


He had a voilent fit of trembling, and then sunk into his 
chair. After a time he controlled himself, and resting with an 
elbow on one knee, and his head upon that hand, could look 
toward Rachael. Seen across the dim candle with his moist- 
ened eyes, slie looked as if she had a glory shining round her 
head. He could have believed she had. He did believe it, as 
the noise without shook the window, rattled at the door below, 
and went about the house clamoring and lamenting. 

“ When she gets better, Stephen, ’tis to be hoped she’ll leave 
thee to thyself again, and do thee no more hurt. Anyways we 
will hope so now. And now I shall keep silence, for I want 
thee to sleep.” 

He closed his eyes, more to please her than to rest his 
weary head ; but, by slow degrees as he listened to the great 
noise of the wind, he ceased to hear it, or it changed into the 
working of his loom, or even into the voices of the day (his own 
included) saying what had been really said. Even this im- 
perfect consciousness faded away at last, and he dreamed a long, 
troubled dream. 

He thought that he, and some one on whom his heart had 
long been set — but she was not Rachael, and that surprised 
him, even in the midst of his imaginary happiness — stood in 
the church being married. While the ceremony was performing, 
and while he recognised among the witnesses some whom he 
knew to be living, and many whom he knew to be dead, dark- 
ness came on, succeeded by the shining of a tremendous light. 
It broke from one line in the table of comandments at the altar, 
and illuminated the building with the words. They were 
sounded through the church too, as if there were voices in the 
fiery letters. Upon this, the whole appearance before him and 
around him changed, and nothing was left as it had been, but 
himself and the clergyman. They stood in the daylight before 
a crowd so vast, that if all the people in the world could have 
been brought together into one space, they could not have 
looked, he thought, more numerous ; and they all abhorred 
him, and there was not one pitying or friendly eye among the 
millions that were fastened on his face. He stood on a raised 
stage, under his own loom ; and, looking up at the shape the 
loom took, and hearing the burial service- distinctly read, he^ 
knew that he was there to suffer death. In an instant what he^ 
stood on fell below him, and he was gone. 

Out of what mystery he came back to his usual life, and to 
places that he knew, he was unable to consider ; but he was 
back in those, places by some means, and with this condemna- 


8o 


IiAlW TIMES. 


tion upon him, that he was never, in this world or the next, 
through ail the unimaginable ages of eternity, to look on 
Rachael’s face or hear lier voice. Wandering to and fro, un- 
ceasingly, without hope, and in search of he knew not what'(he 
' only knew that he was doomed to seek it), he was the subject 
of a nameless, horrible dread, a mortal fear of one particular 
‘shape which everything took. Whatsoever he looked at, grew 
into that form sooner or later. The object of his miserable 
existence was to prevent its recognition by any one among the 
various ])eople he encountered. Hopeless labor ! If he led 
them out of rooms where it was, if he shut -up drawers and 
closets where it stood, if he drew the curious from places where 
he knew it to be secreted, and got them out into the streets, 
the very chimneys of the mills assumed that shape, and round 
them was the printed word. 

The wind was blowing again, the rain was beating on the 
housetops, and the larger spaces through which he had strayed 
contracted to the four walls of his room. Saving that the fire 
had died out, it was as his eyes had closed upon it. Rachael 
seemed to have fallen into a doze, in the chair by the bed. 
She sat wrapped in her shawl, perfectly still. The table 
stood in the same place, close by the bedside, and on it, in its 
real proportions and appearance, was the shape so often re- 
peated. 

He thought he saw the curtain move. He looked again, and 
he was sure it moved. He saw a hand come forth, and grope 
about a little. Then the curtain moved more perceptibly, and 
the woman in the bed put it back, and sat up. 

With her woful eyes, so haggard and wild, so heavy and 
large, she looked all round the room, and passed the corner 
where he slept in his chair. Her eyes returned to that corner, 
and she put her hand over them as a shade, while she looked 
into it. Again they went all round the room, scarcely heeding 
Rachael if at all, and returned to that corner. He thought, as 
she once more shaded them — not so much looking at him, as 
looking for him with a brutish instinct that he was there — that, 
no single trace was left in those debauched features, or in the 
mind that went along with them, of the woman he had married 
eighteen years before. But that he had seen her come to this 
by inches, he never could have believed her to be the same. 

All this time, as if a spell were on him, he was motionless 
and powerless, except to watch her. 

Stupidly dozing, or communing with her incapable self about 
nothing, she sat for a little while with her hands at her ears, and 





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Stephen and Rachael in the Sick-Room. — [Page 8i.] 



, ■ I/A/^D TIMES. . gj 

' er head resting on them. Presently, she resumed her staring 
round the room. And now, for the first time, her eyes stopped 
at the table with the bottles on it. 

Straightway she turned her eyes back to his corner, with 
the defiance of last night, and, moving very cautiously and 
softly, stretched out her greedy hand. She drew a mug into 
the bed, and sat for awhile considering which of the two bottles 
she .should choose. Finally, she laid her insensate grasp upon 
the bottle that had swift and certain death in it, and, before his 
eyes, pulled out the cork with her teeth. 

Dream or reality, he had no voice, nor had he power to stir. 
If this be real, and her allotted time be not yet come, wake, 
Rachael, wake ! 

She thought of that, too. n She looked at Rachael, and very 
slowly, very cautiously, poured out the contents. The draught 
was at her lij)s. A moment and she would be past all help, let 
the whole world wake and come about her with its utmost power. 
But, in that moment Rachael started up with a suppressed cry. 
The creature struggled, struck her, seized her by the hair ; but 
Rachael had the cup. 

Stephen broke out of his chair. “ Rachael, am I wakin’ or 
dreamin’ this dreadfo’ night?" 

“ ’Tis all well, Stephen. I have been asleep myself. ’Tis 
near three. Hush ! I hear the bells." 

The wind brought the sounds of the church clock to the win- 
dow. They listened, and it struck three. Stephen looked at 
her, saw how i)ale she was, noted the disorder of her hair, and 
the red marks of fingers on her forehead, and felt assured that 
his senses of sight and hearing had been awake. She held the 
cup in her hand even now. 

“ I thought it must be near three," she said, calmly pouring 
from the cuj) into the basin, and steeping the linen as before. 
“ I am thankful I stayed ! ’Tis done now, when I have put 
this on. 'There ! And now she’s quiet again. The few dro])s 
in the basin I’ll pour away, for his bad stulf to leave about, 
though ever so little of it." As she spoke she drained the 
basin into the ashes of the fire, and broke the bottle on the 
hearth. 

She had nothing to do, then, but to cover herself with her 
shawl before going out into the wind and rain. 

“Thou ’It let me walk wi’ thee at this hour, Rachael ?’’ 

“No, Stephen. ’Tis but a minute and I’m home." 

“Thoii’rt not fearfo’;’’ he said it in a low voice, as they 
out at the door; “to leave me alone wi’ her !" 

4 * 


82 


/7A/W TIMES. 


As she looked at him, saying “ Stephen?” he went down on 
his knee before her, on the poor mean stairs, and put an end of 
her shawl to his lips. 

“ Thou art an Angel. Bless thee, bless thee ! ” 

“ I am, as I have told thee, Stephen, thy poor friend. An- 
gels are not like me. Between them, and a working woman fu’ 
of faults, there is a deep gulf set. My little sister is among 
them, but she is changed.” 

She raised her eyes for a moment as she said the words ; and 
then they fell again, in all their gentleness and mildness, on his 
face. 

“Thou changest me from bad to good. Thou niak’st me 
humbly wishfo’ to be more like thee, and fearfo’ to lose thee 
when this life is ower, and a’ the muddle cleared awak Thou’rt 
an Angel ; it may be, thou hast saved my soul alive !” 

She looked at him on his knee at her feet, with her shawl still 
in his hand, and the reproof on her lips died away when she 
saw the working of his face. 

“ I coom home desiyrate. I coom home wi’out a hope, and 
mad wi’ thinking that when I said a word o’ complaint I was 
reckoned a onreasonable Hand. I told thee I had had a 
fright. It were the Poison-bottle on table. I never hurt a 
livin’ creatur ; but happenin’ so suddenly upon ’t, I thowt, 

‘ How can I say what I may ha’ done to myseln, or her, or 
both ! ’ ” 

She put her two hands on his mouth, with a face of terror, to 
stoj) him from saying more. He caught them in his unoccu- 
pied hand, and holding them, and still clasping the border of 
her shawl, said, hurriedly : 

“ But I see thee, Rachael, setten by the bed. I ha’ seen 
thee, aw this night. In my troublous sleep 1 ha’ known thee 
still to be there. Evermore I will see thee there. I never- 
more will see her or think o’ her, but thou shalt be beside her. 

I nevermore will see or think o’ anything that angers me, but 
thou, so much better than me, shalt be by th’ side on’t. And 
so I will try t’ look t’ th’ time, and so I will try t’ trust t’ th’ 
time, when thou and me at last shall walk together far awa’, be- 
yond the deep gulf, in th’ country where thy little sister is.” 

He kissed the border of her shawl again, and let her go. 
She bade him good-night in a broken voice, and went out into 
the street. 

The wind blew from the quarter where the day would soon 
appear, and still blew strongly. It had cleared the sky before 
it, and the rain had spent itself or travelled elsewhere, and the 


I/A/^D TIMES. 


83 

stars were bright. He stood bare-headed in the road, watching 
her quick disapj^earance. As the shining stars were to the 
heavy candle in the window, so was Rachael, in the rugged 
fancy of this man, to the common experiences of his life. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

The Great Manufacturer. 

ME went on in Coketown like it’s own machinery : so 
much material wrought up, so much fuel consumed, so 
many powers worn out, so much money made. But, 
less inexorable than iron, steel, and brass, it brought its 
varying seasons even into that wilderness of smoke and brick, 
and made the only stand that ever was made in the place against 
its direful uniformity. 

“ Louisa is becoming,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “ almost a young 
woman.” 

Time, with his innumerable horse-power, worked away, not 
minding what anybody said, and presently turned out young 
Thomas a foot taller than when his father had last taken par- 
ticular notice of hfm. 

^‘Thomas is becoming,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “almost a young 
man.” 

Time passed Thomas on in the mill, while his father was 
thinking about it, and there he stood in a long-tailed coat and a 
stiff shirt-collar. 

“ Really,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “ the period has arrived when 
Thomas ought to go to Bounderby.” 

Time, sticking to him, passed him on into Bounderby’s Bank, 
made him an inmate of Bounderby’s house, necessitated the 
purchase of his first razor, and exercised him diligently in his 
calculations relative to number one. 

The same great manufacturer, always with an immense vari- 
ety of work on hand, in every stage of development, passed 
Sissy onward in his mill, and worked her up into a very pretty 
article indeed. 

“ I fear, Jupe,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “ that your continuance at 
the school any longer, would be useless.” 

. “ I am afraid it would, sir,” Sissy answered with a curtsey. 

■ “ 1 cannot disguise from you, Jupe,” said Mr. Gradgrind, knit- 



84 


HARD TIMES. 


ting his brow, “ that the result of your probation there has dis- 
appointed me ; has greatly disappointed me. You have not ac- 
quired, under Mr. and Mrs. M‘Choakumchild, anything like that 
amount of exact knowledge which I looked for. You are ex- 
tremly deficient in your facts. Your acquaintance with figures is 
very limited. You are altogether backward, and below the mark.” 

“ I am sorry sir,” she returned ; “ but 1 know it is quite true. 
Yet I have tried hard, sir.” 

“Yes,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “yes, I believe you have tried 
hard ; I have observed you, and I can find no fault in that 
respect.” 

“Thank you, sir. I have thought sometimes;” Sissy very 
timid here ; “ that ])erhaps I tried to learn too much, and that if 
1 had asked to be allowed to try a little less, I might have — ” 

“No, Jupe, no,” said Mr. Gradgrind, shaking his head in his 
profoundest and most eminently practical way. “ No. The 
course you pursued, you pursued according to the system — the 
system — and there is no more to be said about it. 1 can only 
suppose that the circumstances of your early life were too un- 
favourable to the development of your reasoning powers, and 
that we began too late. Still, as I have said already, I am 
disappointed.” 

“ I wish I could have a better acknowledgment, sir, of your 
kindness to a poor forlorn girl who had no claim upon you, and 
of your protection of her.” 

“ Don’t shed tears,” said Mr. Gradgrind. “ Don’t shed tears. 
I don’t complain of you. You are an affectionate, earnest, good 
young woman, and — and we must make that do.” 

“Thank you, sir, very much,” said Sissy, with a grateful 
curtsey. 

“You are useful to Mrs. Gradgrind, and (in a generally 
pervading way) you are serviceable in the family also ; so I 
understand from Miss Louisa, and, indeed, so I have observed 
myself. I therefore hope,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “ that you can 
make yourself happy in those relations.” 

“ I should have nothing to wish, sir, if — ” 

“ 1 understand you,” said Mr. Gradgrind ; “ you still refer to 
your father. I have heard from Miss Louisa that you still pre- 
serve that bottle. Well ! If yoUr training in the science of ar- 
riving at exact results had been more successful, you would have 
been wiser on these points. I will say no more.” 

He really liked Sissy too well to have contempt for her ; 
otherwise he held her calculating powers m such very slight 
estimation that he must have fallen upon that conclusion. 


HARD TIMES. 


85 


Somehow or other, he had become possessed by an idea that 
there was something in this girl which could hardly be set forth 
in a tabular form. Her capacity of definition might be easily 
stated at a very low figure, lier mathematical knowledge at 
nothing ; yet he was not sure that if he had been required, for 
example, to kick her off into columns in a parliamentary return, 
he would have quite known how to divide her. 

In some stages of his manufacture of the human fabric, the 
processes of Time are very rapid. Young Thomas and Sissy 
being both at such a stage of their working up, these changes 
were effected in a year or two; while Mr. Gradgrind himself 
seemed stationary in his course, and underwent no alteration. 
Except one, which was ai)art from his necessary progress 
through the mill. Time hustled him into a little noisy and 
rather dirty machinery, in a by-corner, and made him Member 
of Parliament for Coketown : one of the respected members for 
ounce weights and measures, one of the representatives of the 
multiplication table, one of the deaf honorable gentlemen, dumb 
honorable gentlemen, blind honorable gentlemen, lame honor- 
able gentlemen, dead honorable gentlemen, to every other con- 
sideration. Else wherefore live we in a Christian land, eighteen 
hundred and odd years after our Master ? 

All this while, Louisa had been passing on, so quiet and re- 
served, and so much given to watching the bright ashes at 
twilight as they fell into the grate and became extinct, that from 
the period when her father had said she was almost a young 
woman — which seemed but yesterday — she had scarcely at- 
tracted his notice again, when he found her quite a young 
woman. 

“ Quite a young woman,” said Mr. Gradgrind, musing. 

Dear me!” 

Soon after this discovery he became more thoughtful than 
usual for several days, and seemed much engrossed by one sub- 
ject. On a certain night, when he was going out, and Louisa 
came to bid him good-bye before his departure — as he was not 
to be home until late and she would not see him again until the 
morning — he held her in his arms, looking at her in his kindest 
manner, and said : 

My dear Louisa, you are a woman 1 ” 

She answered him with the old, quick, searching look of the 
night when she was found at the Circus ; then cast down her 
eyes. “ Yes, father.” 

“ My dear,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “ I must speak with you 


86 


HARD TIMES. 


alone and seriously. Come to me in my room after breakfast 
to-morrow, will you ? ” 

“ Yes, father.” 

“ Your hands are rather cold, Louisa. Are you not well ? ” 
Quite well, father.” 

“And cheerful ? ” 

She looked at him again, and smiled in her peculiar manner. 
“ I am as cheerful, father, as I usually am, or usually have 
been.”' 

“That’s well,” said Mr. Gradgrind. So, he kissed her and 
went away ; and Louisa returned to the serene apartment of 
the hair-cutting character, and leaning her elbow on her hand, 
looked again at the short-lived sparks that so soon subsided 
into ashes. 

“ Are you there, Loo ? ” said her brother, looking in at the 
door. He was quite a young gentleman of pleasure now, 
and not quite a prepossessing one. 

“ Dear Tom,” she answered, rising and embracing him, “how 
long it is since you have been to see me ! ” 

“ Why, I have been otherwise engaged. Loo, in the evenings ; 
and in the daytime old Bounderby has been keeping me at it 
rather. But 1 touch him up with you, when he comes it too 
strong, and so we preserve an understanding. I say ! Has fa- 
ther said anything particular to you," to day or yesterday. Loo ? ” 

“ No, Tom. But he told me to-night that he wished to do 
so in the morning.” 

“Ah ! that’s what I mean,” said Tom. “Do you know 
where he is to-night ? ” — with a deep expression. 

“ No.” 

“ Then I'll tell you. Lie’s with old Bounderby. They are 
having a regular confab together, up at the Bank. Why at the 
Bank, do you think? Well, I’ll tell you again. To keep Mrs. 
Sparsit’s ears as far off as possible, I expect.” 

‘With her hand upon her brother’s shoulder, Louisa still stood 
looking at the fire. Her brother glanced at her face with 
greater interest than usual, and encircling her waist with his arm, 
drew her coaxingly to him. 

“You are very fond of me, an’t you, Loo ? ” 

“ Indeed I am, Tom, though you do let such long intervals 
go by without coming to see me.” 

“Well, sister of mine,” said Tom, “when you say that, you 
are near my thoughts. We might be so much oftener together 
— mightn’t we ? Always together, almost — mightn’t we ? It 
would do me a great deal of good if you were to make up your 


HARD TIMES. 8 / 

mind to I know what, I>oo. It would be a splended thing for 
me. It would be uncommonly jolly ! ” 

Her thoughtfulness baffled his cunning scrutiny. He could 
make nothing of her face. He pressed her in his arm, and 
kissed her cheek. She returned the kiss, but still looked at 
the fire. 

“ I say, Loo ! I thought I’d come, and just hint to you what 
was going on : though I supposed you’d most likely guess, 4 
even if you didn’t know. I can’t stay, because I’m engaged 
to some fellows to-night. You won’t forget how fond you are 
of me ? ” 

“ No, dear Tom, I won’t forget.” 

“lliat’s a capital girl,” said Tom. ‘‘Good-bye, Loo.” 

She gave him an affectionate good-night, and went out with 
him to the door, whence the fires of Coketown could be seen, 
making the distance lurid. She stood there, looking steadfastly 
towards them, and listening to his departing steps. They re- 
treated quickly, as glad to get away from Stone Lodge ; and 
she stood there yet, when he was gone and all was quiet. It 
seemed as if, first in her own fire within the house, and then in the 
fiery haze without, she tried to discover what kind of woof Old 
Time, that greatest and longest-established Spinner of all, would 
weave from the threds he had already spun into a woman. But 
his factory is a secret place, his work is noiseless, and his Hands 
are mutes. 


CHAPTER XV. 

Father and Daughter. 

LTHOUGH Mr. Gradgrind did not take after Blue 
Beard, his room was quite a blue chamber in its abun- 
dance of blue books. Whatever they could prove 
(which is usually anything you like), they proved there, 
in an army constantly strengthening by the arrival of new re- 
cruits. In that charmed apartment, the most complicated social 
questions were cast up, got into the exact totals, and finally settled 
— if those concerned could only have been brought to know it. 
As if an astronomical observatory should be made without any 
windows, and the astronomer within should arrange the starry 
universe solely by pen, ink, and paper, so Mr. Gradgrind in his 
Observatory (and there are many like it), had no need to cast 



88 


• //AJ?D TIME'S. 


an eye upon the teeming myriads of human beings around him, 
but could settle all their destinies on a slate, and wipe out all 
their tears with one dirty little bit of sponge. 

To this Observatory, then : a stern room, with a deadly 
statistical clock in it, which measured every second with a beat 
like a rap upon a coffin-lid : Louisa repaired on the appointed 
morning. A window looked towards Coketown ; and when 
she sat down near her father’s table, she saw the high chimneys 
and the long tracts of smoke looming in the heavy distance 
gloomily. 

“ My dear Louisa,” said her father, “ I prepared you last 
night to give me your serious attention in the conversation we 
are now going to have together. You have been so well trained, 
and )-ou do, I am happy to say, so much justice to the educa- 
tion you have received, that I have perfect confidence in your 
good sense. You are not impulsive, you are not romantic, you 
are accustomed to view everything from the strong dispassionate 
ground of reason and calculation. From that ground alone, I 
know you will view and consider what 1 am going to commu- 
nicate.” 

He waited, as if he would have been glad that she said some- 
thing. But she said never a word. 

“ Louisa, my dear, you are the subject of a proposal of mar- 
riage that has been made to me.” 

Again he waited, and again she answered not one word. 
This so far surprised him, as to induce him gently to repeat, 
“a proi)osal of marriage, my dear.” To which she returned, 
without any visible emotion whatever : 

“ I hear you, father. I am attending, I assure you.” 

“ ’Well ! ” said Mr. Gradgrind, breaking into a smile, after' 
being for the moment at a loss, “you are even more dispassion- 
ate than I expected, Louisa. Or, perhaps, you are not unpre- 
pared for the announcement I have it in charge to make ? ” 

“ I cannot say that, father, until 1 hear it. Prepared or un- 
prepared, 1 wish to hear it all from you. I wish to hear you 
state it to me, father.” 

Strange to relate, Mr. Gradgrind was not so collected at this 
moment as his daughter was. He took a paper-knife in his 
hand, turned it over, laid it down, took it up again, and even 
then had to look along the blade of it, considering how to go 
on. 

“ What you say, my dear Louisa, is perfectly reasonable. I 
have undertaken then to let you know that — in short, that Mr. 
Bounderby has informed me that he has long watched your 


J/ARD TIMES, 


89 

progress with particular interest and pleasure, and has long 
hoped that the time might ultimately arrive when he should 
offer you his hand in marriage. That time to which he has so 
long, and certainly with great constancy, looked forward, is now 
come. Mr. Bounderby has made his proposal of marriage to 
me, and has entreated me to make it known to you, and to ex- 
press his hope that you will take it into your favorable consid- 
alion.” 

Silence between them. The deadly statistical clock very hol- 
low. The distant smoke very black and heavy. 

“Father,” said Louisa, “do you .think I love Mr. Boun- 
derby ? ” 

Mr. Gradgrind was extremely discomfited by this unexpected 
quetion. “ Well, my child,” he returned, “ 1 — really — cannot 
take upon myself to say.” 

“ Father,” pursued Louisa in exactly the same voice as be- 
fore, “ do you ask me to love Mr. Bounderby ? ” 

“ My dear Louisa, no. No. I ask nothing.” 

“Father,” she still pursued, “does Mr. Bounderby ask me to 
love him ? ” 

“ Really, my dear,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “ it is difficult to 
answer your question — ” 

“Difficult to answer it, Yes or No, father?” 

“ Certainly, my dear. Because ;” here was something to de- 
monstrate, and it set him up again ; “ because the reply depends 
so materially, Louisa, on the sense in which we use the 
expression. Now, Mr. Bounderby does not do you the injustice, 
and does not do himself the injustice, of pretending to anything 
fanciful, fantastic, or (lam using synonymous terms) sentimental. 
Mr. Bounderby would have seen you grow up under his eyes, to 
to very little purpose, if he could so far forget what is due to 
your good sense, not to say to his, as to address you from any 
such ground. Therefore, perhaps the expression itself — I merely 
suggest this to you, my dear — may be a little misplaced.” 

“ What would you advise me to use in its stead, father ? ” 

“Why, my dear Louisa,” said Mr. Gradgrind, completely 
recovered by this time, “ 1 would advise you (since you ask me) 
to consider this question, as you have been accustomed to con- 
sider every other question, simply as one of tangible Fact. 
The ignorant and the giddy may embarrass such subjects with 
irrelevant fancies, and other absurdities that have no existence, 
properly viewed — really no existence — but it is no compliment 
to you to say, that you know better. Now, what are the Facts 
of this case ? You are, we will say in round numbers, twenty 


90 


IIAIH) TIMES. 


years of age ; Mr. Bounderby is, we will say in round numbers, 
fifty. There is some disi)arity in your resi)ective years, but in 
your means and positions there is none ; on the contrary, there 
is a great suitability. Then the question arises, Is this one 
disparity sufficent to operate as a bar to such a marriage ? In 
considering this question, it is not unimportant to take into ac- 
count the statistics of marriage, so far as they have yet been 
obtained, in England and Wales. I find, on reference to the . 
figures, that a large proportion of these marriages are contracted 
between parties of very unequal ages, and that the elder of these 
contracting parties is, in rather more than three-fourths of these 
instances, the bridegroom. It is remarkable as showing the 
wide prevalence of this law, that among the natives of the British 
possessions in India, also in a considerable part of China, and 
among the Calmucks of Tartary, the best means of computation 
yet furnished us by travellers, yield similar results. The disparity 
I have mentioned, therefore, almost ceases to be disparity, and 
(virtually) all but disappears.” 

“ What do you recommend, father,” asked Louisa, her reserved 
composure not in the least affected by these gratifying results, 
“that I should substitute for the term I used just now? For 
the misplaced expression ? ” 

“ Louisa,” returned her father, “ it appears to me that noth- 
ing can be plainer. Confining yourself rigidly to Fact, the 
question of Fact you state to yourself is : Does Mr. Bounderby 
ask me to marry him ? Yes, he does. The sole remaining 
question then is : Shall I marry him ? I think nothing can be 
plainer than that.” 

“Shall I marry him?” repeated Louisa, with great delib- 
eration. 

“ Precisely. And it is satisfactory to me, as your father, my 
dear Louisa, to know that you do not come to the consideration 
of that question with the previous habits of mind, and habits of 
life, that belong to many young women.” 

“No, father,” she returned, “ I do not.” 

“ I now leave you to judge for yourself,”, said Mr. Grad- 
grind. “I have stated the case, as such cases are usually stated 
among practical minds; I have stated it, as the case of your 
mother and myself was stated in its time. The rest, my dear 
Louisa, is for you to decide.” 

From the beginning she had sat looking at him fixedly. As 
he now leaned back in his chair, and bent his deep- set eyes upon 
her in his turn, perhaps he might have seen one waverings 
moment in her, when she was impelled to throw herself upon 


HARD TIMES. 


91 


his breast and give him the ]^ent-up confidences of her heart. 
But, to see it, he must have overleaped at a bound the artificial 
barriers he had for many years been erecting, between himself 
and all those subtle essences of humanity which will elude the 
utmost cunning of algebra until the last trumpet ever to be 
sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck. The barriers were 
too many and too high for such a leap. With his unbending, 
utilitarian, matter-of-fact face, he hardened her again ; and the 
moment shot away into the plumbless dei)ths of the past, to 
mingle with all the lost opportunities that are drowned there. 

Removing her eyes from him, she sat so long looking silently 
towards the town, that he said, at length : “Are you consulting 
the chimneys of the Coketown works, I^ouisa?” 

“ There seems to be nothing there but languid and monotonous 
smoke. Yet when the night comes. Fire bursts out, father ! ” she 
answered, turning quickly. 

“ Of course I know that, Louisa. I do not see the applica- 
tion of the remark.” To do him justice, he did not, at all. 

She passed it away with a slight motion of her hand, and 
concentrating her attention upon' him again, said “Father, I 
have often thought that life is very short.” — This was so dis- 
tinctly one of his subjects that he interi)osed : 

“It is short, no doubt, my dear. Still, the average duration 
of human life is proved to have increased of late years. The 
calculations of various life assurance and annuity offices, among 
other figures which cannot go wrong, have established the fact. ” 

“ 1 speak of my own life, father.” 

“ O indeed 7 Still,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “ I need not point 
out to you, Louisa, that it is governed by the laws which govern 
lives in the aggregate.” 

“ While it lasts, 1 would wish to do the little I can, and the 
little I am fit for. What does it matter ! ” 

Mr. Gradgrind seemed rather at a loss to understand the last 
four words ; replying, “ How, matter ? What matter, my dear ? ” 

“ Mr. Bounderby,” she went on in a steady, straight way, 
without regarding this, “ asks me to marry him. The question 
I have to ask myself is. Shall I marry him ? That is so, father, 
is it not ? You have told me so, father. Have you not ? ” 

“ Certainly, my dear.” 

“ Let it be so. Since Mr. Bounderby likes to take me thus, 
I am satisfied to accept his proposal. Tell him, father, as soon 
as you please, that this was my answer. Repeat it, word for 
word, if you can, because I should wish him to know what I 
9 aid.” 


92 


TIMES. 


• “It is quite right, my dear,” retorted her father approvingly,] 
“ to be exact. I will observe your very proper request. Have 
you any wish in reference to the period of your marriage, my 
child ? ” 

“ None, hither. What does it matter ! ” 

Mr. Gradgrind had drawn his chair a little nearer to her, and 
taken her hand. But, her repetition of these words seemed to 
strike with some little discord on his ear. He paused to look 
at her, and, still holding her hand, said : 

“ Louisa, I have not considered it essential to ask you one 
question, because the possibility implied in it ai^peared to me 
to be too remote. But perhaps, I ought to do so. You have never 
entertained in secret any other proposal ? ” 

“ Father,” she returned, almost scornfully, “ what other pro- 
posal can have been made to fne? Whom have I seen? 
Where have I been ? What are my heart’s experiences ?” 

“ My dear Louisa,” returned Mr. Gradgrind, reassured and 
satisfied, “you correct me jusBy. I merely wished to discharge 
my duty.” 

“What, do /know father,” said Louisa in her quiet mannerj 
“ of tastes and fancies ; of aspirations and affections ; of all that 
part of my nature in which such light things might have been 
nourished ? What escape have 1 had from problems that could 
be demonstrated, and realities that could be grasped?” 'As 
she said it, she unconsciously closed her hand, as if upon a solid ' 
object, and slowly opened it as though she were releasing dusti 
or ash. '* 

“ My dear,” assented her eminently practical parent, “ quite 
true, quite true.” I 

“ Why, father,” she pursued, “ what a strange question to ask'll 
me ! The baby-preference that even I have heard of as com- 
mon among children, has never had its innocent resting-place 
in my breast. You have been so careful of me, that I never 
had a child’s heart. You have trained me so well, that I never 
dreamed a child’s dream. You have dealt so wisely with me, 
father, from my cradle to this hour, that I never had a child’s 
belief or a child’s fear.” 

Mr. Gradgrind was quite moved by his success, and by this 
testimony to it. “ My dear Louisa,” said he, “ you abundantly 
repay my care. Kiss me, my dear girl.” 

So, his daughter kissed him. Detaining her in his embrace, 
he said, “ I may assure you now, my favourite child, that I am 
made happy by the sound decision at which you have arrived. 
Mr. Bounderby is a very remarkable man ; and what little dis- 


//AJ^D TIMES. 


93 


parity can be said to exist between you — if any — is more than 
counterbalanced by the tone your mind has acquired. It has 
always been my object so to educate you, as that you might, 
while still in your early youth, be (if I may so express myself) 
almost any age. Kiss me once more, Louisa. Now, let us go 
and find your mother.” 

Accordingly, they went down to the drawing-room, where 
the esteemed lady with no nonsense about her, was recumbent^ 
as usual, while Sissy worked beside her. She gave some feeble 
signs of returning animation when they entered, and presently 
the faint transparency was presented in a sitting attitude. 

“ Mrs. Gradgrind,” said her husband, who had waited for the 
achievement of this feat with some impatience, “ allow me to 
present to you Mrs. Bounderby.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Mrs. Gradgrind, “ so you have settled it ! 
Well, I’m sure 1 hope your health may be good, Louisa ; for if 
your head begins to split as soon as you are married, which 
was the case with mine, I cannot consider that you are to be 
envied, though I have no doubt you think you are, as all girls 
do. However, I give you joy, my dear — and I hope you may 
now turn all your ological studies to good account, 1 am sure 
I do ! I must give you a kiss of congratulation, Louisa ; but 
don’t touch my right shoulder, for there’s something running 
down it all day long. And now you see,” whimpered Mrs. 
Gradgrind, adjusting her shawls after the afiectionate ceremony, 
“ 1 shall be worrying myself, morning, noon, and night, to know 
what I am to call him ! ” 

“Mrs. Gradgrind,” said her husband, solemnly, “what do 
you mean ? ” 

“ Whatever I am to call him, Mr. Gradgrind, when he is mar- 
ried to Louisa ! I must call him something. It’s impossible,” 
said Mrs. Gradgrind, with a mingled sense of politeness 
and injury, “to be constantly addressing him and never giving 
him a name. I cannot call him Josiah, for the name is insup- 

I portable to me. You yourself wouldn’t hear of Joe, you very 
well know. Am I to call my own son-in-law. Mister. Not, I 
believe, unless the time has arrived when, as an invalid, I am to 
be trampled upon by my relations. Then, what am I to call 
him ! ” 

Nobody present having any suggestion to offer in the remark- 
able emergency, Mrs. Gradgrind dei)arted this life for the time 
being, after delivering the following codicil to her remarks al- 
ready executed : 

“ As to the wedding, all I ask, Louisa, is, — and I ask it with 


94 


//ARB TIMES, 


a fluttering in my chest, which actually extends to the soles of? 
my feet, — that it may take place soon. Otherwise, I know it 
is one of ‘‘hose subjects I shall never hear the last of.'’ 

AVhen Mr. Gradgrind had i)resented Mrs. Bounderby, Sissy 
had suddenly turned her head, and looked, in wonder, in pity, 
in sorrow, in doubt, in a multitude of emotions, towards Louisa.! 
Louisa had known it, and seen it, without looking at her. 
From that moment she was impassive, proud, and cold — held' 
Sissy at a distance — changed to her altogether. | 


CHAPTER XVI. 

Husband and Wife, 




R. BOUNDERBY’S first disquietude on hearing of hi^ 
happiness, was occasioned by the necessity ofimparting if 


to Mrs. Sparsit. He could not make up his mind how tQ 


do that, or what the consequences of the stej) might be. 


Whether she would instantly depart, bag and baggage, to Lady 
Scadgers, or would positively refuse to budge from the preim 
ises ; whether she would be plaintive or abusive, tearful oij 
tearing ; whether she would break her heart, or break the look- 
ing-glass ; Mr. Bounderby could not at all foresee. How 
ever, as it must be done, he had no choice but to do it ; so, 
after attempting several letters, and failing in them all, he re- 
solved to do it by word of mouth. 

On his way home, on the evening he set aside for this 
momentous purpose, he took the precaution of stepj^ing into a 
chemist’s shop and buying a bottle of the very strongest smelling- 
salts. By George ! ” said Mr. Bounderby, “ if she takes it ip 
the fainting way. I’ll have the skin off her nose, at all events ! ” 
ILit, in spite of being thus forearmed, he entered his own house 
with anything but a courageous air ; and appeared before the 


object of his misgivings, like a' dog who was conscious of com- 


ing direct from the ])antry. 

Mr. Bound( 


“ Good evening, 


“ Good evening, ma’am, good 


rby ! ” 


chair, and Mrs. 
“ Your fireside. 


He drew up hig 


Sparsit drew back hers as who should say,' 
, sir. r freely admit it. It is for you to 
occupy it all, if you think proper.” 


' I/A/^D TIMES. 


. 95 

“ Don’t go to the North Pole, ma’am ! ” said Mr. Bounderby. 

“ Thank you, sir,” said Mrs. S[)arsit, and returned, though 
short of her former position. 

Mr. Bounderby sat looking at her, as, with the points of a 
stiff, sharp pair of scissors, she i)icked out holes for some 
inscrutable ornamental purpose, in a piece of cambric. An 
operation which, taken in connexion with the bushy eye-brows 
and the Roman nose, suggested with some liveliness the idea 
of a hawk engaged u])on the eyes of a tough little bird. She 
was so steadfastly occupied, that many minutes elapsed before 
she looked up from her work : when she did so, Mr. Bounderby 
bespoke her attention with a hitch of his head. 

“ Mrs. Sparsit ma’am,” said’ Mr. Bounderby, putting his 
hands in his pockets, and assuring himself with his right hand 
that the cork of the little bottle was ready for use, “ I have no 
occasion to say to you, that you are not only a lady born and 
bred, but a devilish sensible woman.” 

“ Sir,” returned the lady, “ this is indeed not the first time 
that you have honored me with similar expressions of your 
good opinion.” 

“ Mrs. Sparsit ma’am,” said Mr. Bounderby, “ I am going to 
astonish you.” 

“ Yes, sir ?” returned Mrs. Sparsit, interrogatively, and in 
the most tranquil manner possible. She generally wore niit- 
tens, and she now laid down her work, and smoothed those^ 
mittens. 

“ I am going, ma’am,” said Bounderby, “ to marry Tom 
Gradgrind’s daughter.” 

“Yes, sir?” returned Mrs. Sparsit. “I hope you may be 
happy, Mr. Bounderby. Oh, indeed I hope you may be 
happy, sir ! ” And she said it with such great condescension, 
as well as with such great compassion for him, that Bounderby, 
— far more disconcerted than if she had thrown her work-box 
at the mirror, or swooned on the hearth-rug, — corked up the 
smelling-salts tight in his pocket, and thought, “ Now con- 
found this woman, who could have ever guessed that she 
would take it in this way ! ” 

“ I wish with all my heart, sir,” said Mrs. Sparsit, in a highly 
superior manner; somehow she seemed, in a moment, to have 
established a right to pity him ever afterwards ; “ that you may 
be in all respects very hai)py.” 

“ Well, ma’am,” returned Bounderby, with some resentment 
in his tone : which was clearly lowered, though in spite of him- 
self, “ I am obliged to you. I hope I shall be.” 


96 


HARD TIMES. 


“ Do you, sir ! ” said Mrs. Sparsit. with great affability. 

“ But naturally you do ; of course you do.” 

Avery awkward pause on Mr. Bounderby’s part, succeeded. 
Mrs. Sparsit sedately resumed her work, and occasionally 
gave a small cough, which sounded like the cough of conscious 
strength and forbearance. 

“Well, ma’am,” resumed Bounderby, “under these circum- 
stances, 1 imagine it would not be agreeable to a character 
like yours to remain here, though you would be very welcome 
here ? ” 

“ Oh dear no, sir, I could on no account think of that ! ” 
Mrs. Sparsit shook her head, still in her highly superior manner, 
and a little changed the small 'cough — coughing now, as if the 
spirit of prophecy rose within her, but had better be coughed 
down. 

“ However, ma’am,” said Bounderby, “ there are apartments 
at the Bank, where a born and bred lady, as keeper of the place, 
would be rather a catch than otherwise ; and if the same 
terms — ” ; 

“ I beg your pardon, sir. You were so good as to promise 
that you would always substitute the phrase, annual compli- 
ment.” 

“ Well, ma’am, annual compliment. If the same annual j 
compliment would be acceptable there, why, I see nothing to ' 
parts us unless you do.” 

“Sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, “the proposal is like your- 
self, and if the position 1 shall assume at the Bank is one that 
I could occupy without descending lower in the social scale — ” 

“ Why, of course it is,” said Bounderby. “ If it was not, 
ma’am, you don’t suppose that I should offer it to a lady who 
has moved in the society you have moved in. Not that / care 
for such society, you know ! But yo 2 / do.” 

“ Mr. Bounderby, you are very considerate.” 

“ You’ll have your own private apartments, and you ’ll have 
your coals and your candles and all the rest of it, and you’ll 
have your maid to attend upon you, and you ’ll have your i 
light porter to protect you, and you’ll be what I take tlie 
liberty of considering precious comfortable,” said Bounderby. 

“ Sir,” rejoined Mrs. Sixirsit, “ say no more. In yielding up 
my trust here, I shall not be freed from the necessity of eating 
the bread of dependence;” she might have said the sweet- ! 
bread, for that delicate article in a savoury brown sauce was her 1 
favourite supper ; “ and I would rather receive it from your I 
hand, than from any other. Therefore, sir, 1 acept your offer i 


I/A/^D TIMES. 


97 


gratefully, and with many sincere acknowledgments for past 
favors. And I hope sir,” said Mrs. Sparsit, concluding in an 
impressively compassionate manner, “ 1 fondly hope that Miss 
Gradgrind may be all you desire, and deserve ! ” 

Nothing moved Mrs. Sparsit from that position any inore. 
It was in vain for Bounderby to bluster, or to assert himself in 
any of his explosive ways ; Mrs. Sparsit was resolved to have- 
compassion on him, as a Victim. She was polite, obliging, 
cheerful, hopeful ; but, the more polite, the more obliging, the 
more cheerful, the more hopeful, the more exemplary altogether, 
she ; the forlorner Sacrifice and Victim, he. She had that tend- 
erness for his melancholy fate, that his great red countenance 
used to break out into cold perspirations when she looked at 
him. 

Meanwhile the marriage was appointed to be solemnised in 
eight weeks’ time, and Mr. Bounderby went every evening to 
Stone Lodge as an accepted wooer. Love was made on these 
occasion in the form of bracelets ; and, on all occasions during 
the period of betrothal, took a manufacturing aspect. Dresses 
were made, jewellery was made, cakes and gloves were made, 
settlements were made, and an extensive assortment of Facts 
did appropriate honour to the contract. The business was all 
Fact, Lorn first to last. The Hours did not go through any of 
those rosy performances, which foolish poets have ascribed to 
them at such times ; neither did the clocks go any faster, or 
any slower, than at any other seasons. The deadly statistical 
recorder in the Gradgrind observatory knocked every second 
on 'the head as it was born, and buried it with his accustomed 
regularity. 

So the day came, as all other days come to people who will 
only stick to reason ; and when it came, there were married in 
the church of the florid wooden legs — that popular order of 
architecture — Josiah Bounderby Esquire of Coketown, to Louisa 
eldest daughter of Thomas Gradgrind- Esquire of Stone Lodge, 
M.P. for that borough. And when they were united in holy 
matrimony, they went home to breakfast at Stone Lodge afore- 
said. 

There was an improving party assembled on the ausi)icious 
occasion, who knew what everything they had to eat and drink 
was made of, and how it was imported or exported, and in what 
quantities, and in what bottoms, whether native or foreign, and 
all about it. The bridesmaids, down to little Jane Gradgrind, 
were, in an intellectual point of view, fit helpmates for the cal- 
5 


98 


TIMES. 


culating boy ; and there was no nonsense about any of the 
company. 

After breakfast, the bridegroom addressed them in the follow- 
ing terms. 

“ Ladies and gentlemen, I am Josiah Bounderby of Coke- 
town. Since you have done my wife and myself the honour of 
drinking our healths and happiness, I suppose I must acknowl- 
edge the same ; though, as you all know me, and know what I 
am, and what my extraction was, you won’t expect a speech 
from a man who, when he sees a Post, says ‘ that’s a Post,’ and 
when he sees a Pump says ‘ that’s a Pump,’ and is not to be 
got to call a Post a Pump, or a Pump a Post, or either of them 
a Toothpick. If you want a speech this morning, my friend and 
father-in-law, Tom Gradgrind, is a Member of Parliament, and 
you know where to get it. I am not your man. However, if 
I feel a little independent when 1 look around this table to-day, 
and reflect how little I thought of marrying Tom Gradgrind’ s 
daughter when I was a ragged street-boy, who never washed 
his face unless it was at a pump, and that not oftener than once 
a fortnight, I hope I may be excused. So, I hope you like 
my feeling independent ; if you don’t I can’t help it. I do feel 
independent. Now I have mentioned, and you have mentioned, 
that I am this day married to Tom Gradgrind’s daughter. I 
am very glad to be so. It has long been my wish to be so. I 
have watched her bringing-up, and I believe she is worthy of 
me. At the same time — not to deceive you — I believe I am 
worthy of her. So, I thank you, on both our parts, for the 
good-will you have shown towards us ; and the best wish I can 
give the unmarried part of the present company, is this : I hope 
every bachelor may find as good a wife as I have found. And 
I hope every spinster may find as good a husband as my wife 
has found.” 

Shortly after which oration, as they were going on a nuptial 
trip to Lyons, in order that Mr. Bounderby might take the op- 
portunity of seeing how the Hands got on in those parts, and 
whether they, too, required to be fed with gold spoons ; the 
happy pair departed for the railroad. The bride, in passing 
down-stairs, dressed for her journey, found Tom waiting for 
her — flushed, either with his feelings or the vinous part of the 
breakfast. 

“ What a game girl you are, to be such a first-rate sister, 
Loo ! ” whispered Tom. 

She clung to him, as she should have clung to some far bet- 


BARD TIMES. 


99 

ter nature that day, and was a little shaken in her reserved 
composure for the first time. 

“Old Bounderby’s quite ready,” said Tom. “Time’s up. 
Good-bye ! I shall be on the look-out for you, when you 
come back. I say, my dear Loo ! An’t it uncommonly jolly 
now ! ” 


BOOK THE SECOND.— REAPING. 


CHAPTER I. 

Effects in the Bank. 

SUNNY midsummer day. There was such a thing 
sometimes, even in Coketown. 

Seen from a distance in such weather, Coketown lay 
shrouded in a haze of its own, which appeared imper- 
vious to the sun’s rays. You only knew the town was there, 
because you knew there could have been no such sulky blotch 
upon the prospect without a town. A blur of soot and smoke, 
now confusedly tending this way, now that way, now aspiring 
to the vault of Heaven, now murkily creeping along the earth, 
as the wind rose and fell, or changed its quarter : a dense form- 
less jumble, with sheets of cross light in it, that showed nothing 
but masses of darkness : — Coketown in the distance was sug- 
gestive of itself, though not a brick of it could be seen. 

The wonder was, it was there at all. It had been ruined so 
often, that it was amazing how it had borne so many shocks. 
Surely there never was such fragile china-ware as that of which 
the millers of Coketown were made. Handle them never so 
lightly, and they fell to pieces with such ease that you might sus- 
pect them of having been flawed before. They were ruined, when 
they were required to send labouring children to school ; they were 
ruined when inspectors were appointed to look into their works ; 
they were ruined, when such inspectors considered it doubtful 
whether they were quite justified in chopping people up with 
their machinery ; they were utterly undone, when it was hinted 
that perhaps they need not always make quite so much smoke. 
Besides Mr. Bounderby’s gold spoon which was generally re- 
ceived in Coketown, another prevalent fiction was very popular 
there. It took the form of a threat. Whenever a Coketowner 
felt he was ill-used — that is to say, whenever he was not left en- 
tirely alone, and it was proposed to hold him accountable for the 




HARD TIMES. 


lOI 


consequences of any of his acts — he was sure to come out with 
the awful menace, that lie would “ sooner pitch his property 
into the Atlantic.” This had terrified the Home Secretary 
within an inch of his life, on several occasions. 

However, the Coketowners were so patriotic after all, that 
they never had pitched their property into the Atlantic yet, but 
on the contrary, had been kind enough to take mighty good care 
of it. So there it was, in the haze yonder ; and it increased 
and multiplied. 

The streets were hot and dusty on the summer day, and the 
sun was so bright that it even shone through the heavy vapour 
drooping over Coketown, and could not be looked at steadily. 
Stokers emerged from low underground doorways into factory 
yards, and sat on steps, and posts, and palings, wiping their 
swarthy visages, and contemplating coals. The whole town 
seemed to be frying in oil. There was a stifling smell of hot 
oil everywhere. The steam-engines shone with it, the dresses 
of the Hands were soiled with it, the mills throughout their 
many stories oozed and trickled it. The atmosphere of those 
Fairy palaces was like the breath of the simoom ; and their in- 
habitants, wasting with heat, toiled languidly in the desert. 
But no temperature made the melancholy mad elephants more 
mad or more sane. Their wearisome heads went up and down 
at the same rate, in hot weather and cold, wet weather and dry, 
fair weather and foul. The measured motion of their shadows 
on the walls, was the substitute Coketown had to show for the 
shadows of rustling woods ; while, for the summer hum of in- 
sects, it could offer, all the year round, from the dawn of Mon- 
day to the night of Saturday, the whirr of shafts and wheels. 

Drow'sily they whirred all through this sunny day, making the 
passenger more sleepy and more hot as he passed the hum- 
ming w-alls of the mills. Sun-blinds, and sprinklings of water, 
a little cooled the main streets and the shops ; but the mills, 
and the courts and alleys, baked at a fierce heat. Down upon 
the river that was black and thick with dye, some Coketown 
boys who were at large — a rare sight there — rowed a crazy boat, 
which made a spumous track upon the water as it jogged along, 
while every dip of an oar stirred up vile smells. But the sun 
itself, however beneficent generally, was less kind to Coketown 
than hard frost, and rarely looked intently into any of its closer 
regions without engendering more death than life. So does the 
eye of Heaven itself become an evil eye, when incapable or 
sordid hands are interposed betw'een it and the things it looks 
upon to bless. 


■102 


HARD TIMES, 


Mrs. Sparsit sat in her afternoon apartment at the Bank, on 
the shadier side of the frying street. Ofhce-hours were over : and 
at that period of the day, in warm weather, she usually embel- 
lished with her genteel presence, a managerial board-room over 
the public office. Her own private sitting-room was a story 
high, at the window of which post of observation she was 
ready, every morning, to greet Mr. Bounderby, as he came 
across the road, with the sympathising recognition appropriate 
to a Victim. He had been married now, a year ; and Mrs. 
Sparsit had never released him from her determined pity a 
moment. 

The Bank offered no violence to the wholesome monotony 
of the town. It was another red brick house, with black out- 
side shutters, green inside blinds, a black street-door up two 
. white steps, a brazen door-plate, and a brazen door-handle full 
stop. It was a size larger than Mr. Bounderby’s house, as other 
houses were from a size to half-a-dozen sizes smaller ; in all 
other particulars, it was strictly according to pattern. 

Mrs. Sparsit was conscious that by coming in the evening- 
tide among the desks and writing implements, she shed a femi- 
nine, not to say also aristociatic, grace upon the office. Seated, 
with her needlework or netting apparatus, at the window, she 
had a self-laudatory sense of correcting, by her ladylike deport- 
ment, the rude business aspect of the place. With this impres- 
sion of her interesting character upon her, Mrs. Sparsit con- 
sidered herself, in some sort, the Bank Fairy. The townspeople 
who, in their passing and repassing, saw her there, regarded 
her as the Bank Dragon keeping watch over the treasures of 
the mine. 

What those treasures were, Mrs. Sparsit knew as little as 
they did. Gold and silver coin, precious paper, secrets that if 
divulged would bring a vague destruction upon vague persons 
(generally, however, people whom she disliked), were the chief 
items in her ideal catalogue thereof For the rest, she knew 
'that after office-hours, she reigned supreme over all the office 
furniture, and over a locked-up iron room with three locks, 
against the door of which strong chamber the light porter laid 
his head every night, on a truckle bed, that disappeared at 
cockcrow. Further she was lady paramount over certain vaults 
in the ^basement, sharply piked off from communication with 
the prefatory world ; and over the relics of the current day’s 
work, consisting of blots of ink, worn-out pens, fragments of 
wafers, and scraps of paper torn so small, that nothing interest- 
ing could ever be deciphered on them when Mrs. Sparsit tried. 


//ARD TIMES. 


103 


I.astly, she was guardian over a little armoury of cutlasses and 
carbines, arrayed in vengeful order above one of the official 
chiinney-peices ; and over that respectable tradition never to 
be separated from a place of business claiming to be wealthy — 
a row of fire-buckets — vessels calculated to be of no physical 
utility on any occasion, but observed to exercise a fine moral 
influence, almost equal to bullion, on most beholders. 

A deaf serving-woman and the light porter completed Mrs. 
Sparsit’s empire. The deaf serving woman was rumoured to 
be wealthy ; and a saying had for years gone about among the 
lower orders of Coketown, that she would be murdered some 
night when the Bank was shut, for the sake of her money. It 
was generally considered, indeed, that she had been due some 
time, and ought to have fallen long ago ; but she had kept her 
life, and her situation, with an ill-conditioned tenacity that oc- 
casioned much offence and disappointment. 

Mrs. Sparsit’s tea was just set for her on a pert little table, 
with its tripod of legs in an attitude, which she insinuated after 
office-hours, into the company of the stern, leathern-topped, 
long board-table that bestrode the middle of the room. The 
light porter placed the tea-tray on it, knuckling his forehead as 
a form of homage. 

“ Thank you, Bitzer,” said Mrs. Sparsit. 

“Thank 7 ^ 72 /, ma’am,” returned the light porter. He was a 
very light porter indeed ; as light as in the days when he blink- 
ingly defined a horse, for girl number twenty. 

“ All is shut up, Bitzer?” said Mrs. Sparsit. 

“All is shut up, ma’am.” 

“ And what,” said Mrs. Sparsit, pouring out her tea, “is the 
news of the day ? Anything ? ” 

“ Well, ma’am, I can’t say that I have heard anything partic- 
ular. Our people are a bad lot ma’am ; but that is no news, 
unfortunately.” 

“ What are the restless wretches doing now ? ” asked Mrs. 
Sparsit. 

“ Merely going on in the old way, ma’am. Uniting, and 
leaguing, and engaging to stand by one another.” 

“It is much to be regretted,” said Mrs. Sparsit, making her 
nose more Roman and her eyebrows more Coriolanian in the 
strength of severity, “ that the united masters allow of any such 
class-combinations.” 

“ Yes, ma’am,” said Bitzer. 

“Being united themselves, they ought one and all to set their 


104 


JIAJ?n TIMES. 


faces against employing any man who is united with any other 
man,” said Mrs. Sparsit. 

“They have done that, ma’am,” returned Bitzer; “but it 
rather fell through, ma’am.” 

“ I do not pretend to understand these things,” said Mrs. 
Sparsit, with dignity, “my lot having been originally cast in a 
widely different sphere ; and Mr. Sparsit, as a Bowler, being 
also quite out of the pale of any such dissensions. I only know 
that these people must be conquered, and that it’s high time it 
was done, once for all.” 

“ Yes, ma’am,” returned Bitzer, with a demonstration of great 
respect for Mrs. Sparsit’s oracular authority. “ You couldn’t 
])ut it clearer, I am sure, ma’am.” 

As this was his usual hour for having a little confidential chat 
wuth Mrs. Sparsit, and as he had already caught her eye and 
seen that she was going to ask him something, he made a pre- 
tence of arranging the rulers, inkstands, and so forth, while that 
lady went on with her tea, glancing through the open window, 
down into the street. 

“ Has it been a busy day, Bitzer?” asked Mrs Sparsit. 

“ Not a very busy day, my lady. About an average day.” 
He now and then glided into my lady, instead of ma’am, as an 
involuntary acknowledgment of Mrs. Sparsit’s personal dignity 
and claims to reverence. 

' “The clerks,” said Mrs. Sparsit, carefully brushing an imper- 
cei)tible crumb of bread and butter from her left hand mitten, 
“are trustworthy, punctual, and industrious, of course?” 

“ Yes, ma’am, pretty fair, ma’am. With the usual exception.” 

He held the respectable office of general spy and informer in 
the establishment, for which volunteer service he received a 
present at Christmas, over and above his weekly wages. He 
had grown into an extremely clear-headed, cautious, prudent 
young man, who was safe to rise in the world. His mind was 
so exactly regulated, that he had no affections or passions. All 
his proceedings were the result of the nicest and coldest calcu- 
lation ; and it was not without cause that Mrs. Sparsit habitually 
observed of him, that he was a young man of the steadiest prin- 
ciple she had ever known. Having satisfied himself, on his 
father’s death, that his mother had a right of settlement in 
Coketown, this excellent young economist had asserted that 
right for her with such a steadfast adherence to the principle of 
the case, that she had been shut up in the workhouse ever 
since. It must be admitted that he allowed her half a pound 
of tea a year, which was weak in him : first, because ail gifts 


HA/^D TIMES. " IQ5 

have an inevitable tendency to pauperise the recipient, and 
secondly, because his only reasonable transaction in that coinn;o- 
dity would have been to buy it for as little as he could possibly 
give, and sell it for as much as he could possibly get; it having 
been clearly ascertained by philosophers that in this is comprised 
the whole duty of man — not a part of man’s duty, but the whole. 

“ Pretty fair ma’am. With the usual exception, ma’am,” 
repeated Bitzer. 

“Ah — h !” said Mrs. Sparsit, shaking her head over her tea- 
cup, and taking a long gulp. 

“ Mr. Thomas, ma’am, I doubt Mr. Thomas very much, 
ma’am, 1 dont like his ways at all.” 

“ Bitzer,” said Mrs. Sparsit, in a very impressive manner, 
“ do you recollect my having said anything to you respecting 
names ? ” 

“ 1 beg your pardon, ma’am. It’s quite true that you did ob- 
ject to names being used, and they’re always best avoided.” 

“ Please to remember that I have a charge here,” said Mrs. 
Sparsit, with her air of state. “ 1 hold a trust here, Bitzer, 
under Mr. Bounderby. However improbable both Mr. Boun- 
derby and myself might have deemed it years ago, that he would 
ever become my patron, making me an annual compliment, I 
cannot but regard him in that light. From Mr. Bounderby I 
have received every acknowledgment of my social station, and 
every recognition of my family descent, that I could possibly 
expect. More, far more. Therefore, to my patron I will be 
scrupulously true. And I do not consider, I will not consider, 
I cannot consider,”^ said Mrs. Sparsit, with a most extensive 
stock on hand of honour and morality, “ that I should be scrupu- 
lously true, if 1 allowed names to be mentioned under this roof, 
that are unfortunately — most unfortunately — no doubt of that — 
connected with his.” 

Bitzer knuckled his forehead again, and again begged pardon. 

“ No, Bitzer,” continued Mrs. Sparsit, “ say an individual, and 
I will hear you ; say Mr. Thomas, and you must excuse me.” 

“ With the usual exception, ma’am,” said Bitzer, trying back, 
“ of an individual.” 

“Ah — h !” Mrs. Sparsit repeated the ejaculation, the shake 
of the head over her tea-cup, and the long gulp, as taking up 
the conversation again at the point where it had been inter- 
rupted. 

“ An individual, ma’am,” said Bitzer, “ has never been what 
he ought to have been, since he first came into the. place. He 
is a dissipated, extravagant idler. He is not worth his salt, 
5 * ' ' 


io6 


HARD TIMES. 


ma’am. He wouldn’t get it either, if he hadn’t a friend and 
relation at court, ma’am ! ” 

Ah — h ! ” said Mrs. Sparsit, with another melancholy shake 
of her head. 

“ I only hope, ma’am,” pursued Bitzer, “ that his friend and 
relation may not supply him with the means of carrying on. 
Otherwise, ma’am, we know out of whose pocket that money 
comes.” 

“ Ah — h ! ” sighed Mrs. Sparsit again, with another melan- 
choly shake of her head. 

“ He is to be pitied, ma’am. The last party I have alluded 
to, is to be pitied, ma’am,” said Bitzer. 

“ Yes, Bitzer,” said Mrs. Sparsit. “ I have always pitied the 
delusion, always.” 

, “ As to an individual, ma’am,” said Bitzer, dropping his voice 
and drawing nearer, “ he is as improvident as any of the people 
in this town. And you know what their improvidence is, 
ma’am. No one could wish to know it better than a lady of 
your eminence does.” 

“ They would do well,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, “ to take exam- 
ple by you, Bitzer.” 

“ Thank you, ma’am. But, since you do refer to me, now* 
look at me, ma’am. I have put by a little, ma’am, already. 
That gratuity which I receive at Christmas, ma’am : I never 
touch it. 1 don’t even go the length of my wages, though 
" they’re not high, ma’am. Why can’t they do as I have done, 
"ma’am ? What one person can do, another can do.” 

This, again, was among the fictions of Coketown. Any capi- 
talist there, who had made sixty thousand pounds out of six- 
])ence, always j^rofessed to wonder why the sixty thousand near- 
est Hands didn’t each make sixty thousand pounds out of six- 
pence, and more or less reproached them every one for not 
accomplishing the little feat. What I did you can do. Why 
don’t you go and do it? 

“As to their wanting recreations, ma’am,” said Bitzer, “it’s 
stuff and nonsense. I don’t want recreations. I never did, 
and I never shall ; I don’t like ’em. As to their combining 
together ; there are many of them, I have no doubt, that by 
watching and informing upon one another could earn a trifle 
now and then, whether in money or good will, and improve 
their livelihood. Then, why don’t they improve it, ma’am ? 
It’s the first consideration of a rational creature, and it’s what 
they pretend to want.” 

“ Pretend indeed ! ” said Mrs. Sparsit. 


HARD TIMES. 


107 


I am sure we are constantly hearing, ma’am, till it becomes 
quite nauseous, concerning their wives and families,” said 
Bitzer. “\Vhy look at me, ma’am ! /don’t want a wife and 
family. Why should they?” 

“Because they are improvident,” said Mrs. Sparsit. 

“Yes, ma’am,” returned Bitzer, “that’s where it is. If they 
were more provident, and less perverse, ma’am, what would 
they do ? They would say, ‘ While my hat covers my family,’ 
or ‘ while my bonnet covers my family ’ — as the case might be, 
ma’am — ‘ I have only one to feed, and that’s the person I most 
like to feed.” 

“ To be sure,” assented Mrs. Sparsit, eating muffin. 

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Bitzer, knuckling his forehead 
again, in return for the favour of Mrs. Sparsit’s improving con- 
versation. “ Would you wish a little more hot water, ma’am, 
or is there anything else that I could fetch you ? ” 

“ Nothing just now, Bitzer.” 

“Thank you, ma’am. I shouldn’t wish to disturb you at 
your meals, ma’am, particularly tea, knowing your partiality for 
it,” said Bitzer, craning a little to look over into the street from 
where he stood ; “ but there’s a gentleman been looking up 
here for a minute or so, ma’anj, and he has come across as if he 
was going to knock. That is his knock, ma’am, no doubt.” 

He stepped to the window ; and looking out, and drawing in 
his head again, confirmed himself with, “Yes, ma’am. Would 
you wish the gentleman to be shown in, ma’am? ” 

“I don’t know who it can be,” said Mrs. Sparsit, wiping her 
mouth and arranging her mittens. 

“ A stranger, ma’am, evidently.” 

“What a stranger can want at the Bank at this time of the 
evening, unless he comes upon some business for which he is 
too late, I don’t know,” said Mrs. Sj)arsit, “but I hold a charge 
in this establishment from Mr. Hounderby, and I will never 
shrink from it. If to see him is any part of the duty I have 
accepted, I wall see him. Use your own discretion, Bitzer.” 

Here the visitor, all unconsciousof Mrs. Sparsit’s magnanimous 
w'ords, repeated his knock so loudly that the light porter has- 
tened down to open the door ; while Mrs. Sj)arsit took the pre- 
caution of concealing her little table, with all its appliances upon 
it in a cupboard, and then decamj^ed up stairs that she might 
appear, if needful, with the greater dignit}^ 

“ If you please, ma’am, the gentleman would wish to see you,” 
said Bitzer, with his light eye at Mrs. Sparsit’s keyhole. So, 
Mrs. Sparsit, who had improved the interval by touching up her 


HARD TIAIES. 


I08 

cap, took her classical features down -stairs again, and entered 
the board- room in the manner of a Roman matron going out- 
side the city walls to treat with an invading general. 

The visitor having strolled to the window, and being then en- 
gaged in looking carelessly out, was as unmoved by this impres- 
sive entry as man could possibly be. He stood whistling to 
himself witli all imaginable coolness, with his hat still on, and 
a certain air of exhaustion upon him, in part arising from ex- 
cessive summer, and in part from excessive gentility. For, it 
was to be seen with half an eye that he was a thorough gentle- 
man made to the model of the time ; weary of everything, and 
putting no more faith in anything than Lucifer. 

‘‘I believe, sir,” quoth Mrs. Sparsit, “you wished to see 
me.” 

“ I beg your pardon,” he said, turning and removing his hat ; 
“ pray excuse me.” 

‘‘ Humph ! ” thought Mrs. Sparsit, as she made a stately bend. 
“ Five and thirty, good-looking, good figure, good teeth, good 
voice, good breeding, well-dressed, dark hair, bold eyes.” All 
which Mrs. Sparsit observed in her womanly way — like the Sul- 
tan who put his head in the pail of water — merely in dipping 
down and coming up again. 

. “ Please to be seated, sir,” said Mrs. Sparsit. 

“ Thank you. Allow me.” He placed a chair for her, but 
remained himself carelessly lounging against the table. “ I left 
my servant at the railway looking after the luggage — very heavy 
train and vast quantity of it in the van — and strolled on, look- 
ing about me. Exceedingly odd i)lace. Will you allow me to 
ask you if it’s always as black as this ? ” 

“In general much blacker,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, in her un- 
compromising way. 

“Is it possible ! Excuse me : you are not a native, I 
think ? ” 

“ No, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit. “ It was once my good 
or ill fortune, as it maybe — before I became a widow — to move 
in a very different sphere. My husband was a Powler.” 

“ Beg your ]3ardon, really ! ” said the stranger. “ Was—? ” 

Mrs. Sparsit repeated, “ A Powler.” “ Powler Family,” said 
the stranger, after refiecting a few moments. Mrs. Sparsit sig- 
nified assent. The stranger seemed a little more fatigued than 
before. 

“ You must be very much bored here ? ” was the inference he 
drew from the communication. 

“ I am the servant of circumstances, sir,” said Mrs. Sparsit, 


HARD TIMES. 


109 


‘‘ and I have long adapted myself to the governing power of my 
life.” 

“ Very philosophical,” returned the stranger, “ and very ex- 
emplary and laudable, and — ” It seemed to be scarcely worth 
his while to finish the sentence, so he played with his watch- 
chain wearily. 

“ May I be permitted to ask, sir,” said Mrs. Sparsit, to 
what I am indebted for the favour of — ” 

“Assuredly,” said the stranger. “Much obliged to you for 
reminding me. I am the bearer of a letter of introduction to 
Mr. Bounderby the banker. Walking through this extraordi- 
narily black town, while they were getting dinner ready at the 
hotel, I asked a fellow whom I met ; one of the working peo- 
l)le ; who appeared to have been taking a shower-bath of some- 
thing fiufiy, which I assume to be the raw material — ” ; 

Mrs. Sparsit inclined her head. 

“ — Raw material — where Mr. Bounderby, the banker, might 
reside. Upon which, misled no doubt by the word Banker, he 
directed me to the Bank. Fact being, I presume, that Mr. 
Bounderby the Banker, does not reside in the edifice in which 
I have the honour of offering this explanation ? ” 

“No, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, “he does not.” 

“Thank you. I had no intention of delivering my letter at 
the present moment, nor have I. But strolling on to the Bank 
to kill time, and having the good fortune to observe at the 
window,” towards which he languidly waved his hand, then 
slightly bowed, “ a lady of a very superior and agreeable ap- 
pearance, I considered that I could not do better than take the 
liberty of asking that lady where Mr. Bounderby the Banker 
does live. Which I accordingly venture, with all suitable apol- 
ogies, to do.” 

The inattention and indolence of his manner were sufficiently 
relieved, to Mrs. Sparsit’s thinking, by a certain gallantry at ease, 
which offered her homagp too. Here he was, for instance, at 
this moment, all but sitting on the table, and yet lazily bending 
over her, as if he acknowledged an attraction in her that made 
her charming — in her way. 

“ Banks, I know, are ajways suspicious, and officially must 
be,” said the stranger, whose lightness and smoothness of 
speech were pleasant likewise ; suggesting matter far more sen- 
sible and humorous than it ever contained — which was perhaps 
a shrewd device of the founder of this numerous sect, whoso- 
ever may have been that great man : “ therefore I may observe 
that my letter — here it is — is from the member for this place — 


1 1 1 


HARD TIMES. 


Gradgrind — whom I have had the pleasure of knowing in Lon* 
don.” 

Mrs. Si)arsit recognised the hand, intimated that such confir- 
mation was quite unnecessary, and gave Mr. Bounderby’s ad- 
dress, with all needful clues and directions in aid. 

“ Thousand thanks,” said the stranger. “ Of course you 
know the Banker well ? ” 

“Yes, sir,” rejoined Mrs. Sparsit. “In my dependent rela- 
tion towards him, I have known him ten years.” 

“ Quite an eternity ! I think he married Gradgrind’s 
daughter? ” 

“Yes,” said Mrs. Sparsit, suddenly compressing her mouth, 
“.he had that — honour.” 

“The lady is quite a philosopher, I am told ? ” 

“Indeed, sir,” said Mrs. Sparsit. “/rshe?” 

“ Excuse my impertinent curiosity,” pursued the stranger, 
fluttering over Mrs. Sparsit’ s eyebrows, with a propitiatory air, 
“ but you know the family, and know the world. I am about 
to know the family, and may have much to do with them. Is 
the lady so very alarming ? Her father gives her such a por- 
tentously hard-headed reputation, that I have a burning desire 
to know. Is she absolutely unapproachable ? Repellently and 
stunningly clever? I see, by your meaning smile, you think 
not. You have poured balm into my anxious soul. As to age, 
now. Forty ! Five and thirty ? ” 

Mrs. Sparsit laughed outright. “ A chit,” said she. “ Not 
twenty when she was married.” 

“I give you my honour, Mrs. Powler,” returned the stranger, 
detaching himself from the table, “ that I never was so aston- 
ished in my life ! ” 

It really did seem to impress him, to the utmost extent of his 
capacity of being impressed. He looked at his informant for 
full a quarter of a minute, and appeared to have the surprise in 
his mind all the time. “ I assure you, Mrs. Powler,” he then 
said, much exhausted, “that the father’s manner prepared me 
for a grim and stony maturity. I am obliged to you, of all 
things, for correcting so absurd a mistake. Pray excuse my 
intrusion. Many thanks. Good day ! ” 

He bowed himself out ; and Mrs. Sparsit, hiding in the win- 
dow-curtain, saw him languishing down the street on the shady 
side of the way, observed of all the town. 

“ What do you think of the gentleman, Bitzer ? ” she asked 
the light porter, when he came to take away. 

“ Spends a deal of money on his dress, ma’am. / 


I/ARD TIMES, 


III 


“ It must be admitted,” said Mrs. Sparsit, “ that it’s very 
tasteful.” 

“ Yes, ma’am,” returned Bitzer, “if that’s worth the money.” 

“ Besides which, ma’am,” resumed Bitzer, while he was pol- 
hising the table, “he looks to me as if he gamed.” 

“ It’s immoral to game,” said Mrs. Sparsit. 

“It’s ridiculous, ma’am,” said Bitzer, “because the chances 
are against the players.” 

Whether it was that the heat prevented Mrs. Sparsit from 
working, or whether it was that her hand was out, she did no 
work that night. She sat at the window, when the sun began 
to sink behind the smoke ; she sat there, when the smoke was 
burning red, when the color faded from it, when darkness 
seemed to rise slowly out of the ground, and creep upward, up- 
ward, up to the house-tops, up the church steeple, up to the 
summits of the factory chimneys, up to the sky. Without a 
candle in the room, Mrs. Sjiarsit sat at the window, with her 
hands before her, not thinking much of the sounds of evening : 
the whooping of boys, the barking of dogs, the rumbling of 
wheels, the steps and voices of passengers, the slirill street cries, 
the clogs upon the pavement when it was their hour for going 
by, the shutting-up of shop-shutters. Not until the light ])orter 
announced that her nocturnal sweetbread was ready, did Mrs. 
Sparsit arouse herself from her reverie, and convey her dense 
black eyebrows — by that time creased with meditation, as if 
they needed ironing out — up stairs. 

“ O, you Fool ! ” said Mrs. Si:>arsit, when she was alone at her 
supper. Whom she meant, she did not say; but she could 
scarcely have meant the sweetbread. 


CHAPTER II. 

Mr. James Harthouse. 

I HE Gradgrind i:)arty wanted assistance in cutting the 
throats of the Graces. They went about recruiting ; 
and where could they enlist recruits more hopefully, 
^ than among the fine gentlemen who, having found out 
everything to be worth nothing, were equally ready for anything ? 

Moreover, the healthy spirits who had mounted to' this sub- 
lime height were attractive to many of the Gradgrind school. 



I 12 


J/ARB TIMES. 


They liked fine gentlemen ; they pretended tliat they did not, 
but they did. They became exhausted in imitation of them ; 
and they yaw-yawed in their siieech like them ; and they served 
out, with an enervated air, the little mouldy rations of political 
economy, on which they regaled their discijiles. There never 
before was seen on earth such a wonderful hybrid race as was 
thus ]iroduced. 

Among the fine gentlemen not regularly belonging to the 
Gradgrind school, there was one of a good family and a better 
appearance, with a happy turn of humour which had told im- 
mensely with the House of Commons on the occasion of his 
entertaining it with his (and the Board of Directors’) view of a 
railway accident, in which the most careful officers ever known, 
employed by the most liberal managers ever heard of, assisted 
by the finest mechanical contrivances ever devised, the whole 
in action on the best line ever constructed, had killed five peo- 
ple and wounded thirty-two, by a casualty without which the 
excellence of the whole system would have been positively in- 
complete. Among the slain was a cow, and among the scat- 
tered articles unowned, a widow’s cap. And the honourable 
member had so tickled the House (which has a delicate sense 
of humour) by putting the cap on the cow, that it became impa- 
tient of any serious reference to the Coroner’s Inquest, and 
brought the railway off with Cheers and Laughter. 

Now, this gentleman had a younger brother of still better ap- 
])earance than himself, who had tried life as a Cornet of Dra- 
goons, and found it a bore ; and had afterwards tried it in the 
train of an English minister abroad, and found it a bore ; and 
had then strolled to Jerusalem, and got bored there ; and had 
then gone yachting about the world, and got bored everywhere. 
To whom this honourable and jocular member fraternally said 
one day, “Jem, there’s a good opening among the hard Fact 
fellows, and they want men. I wonder you don’t go in for sta- 
tistics.” Jem, rather taken by the novelty of the idea, and very 
hard up for a change, was as ready to “go in” for statistics as 
for anything else. So, he went in. He coached himself up 
with a blue-book or two ; and his brother put it about among 
the hard Fact fellows, and said, “If you want to bring in, for 
any ])lace, a handsome dog who can make you a devilish good 
speech, look after my brother Jem, for he’s your man.” After 
a few dashes in the })ublic meeting way, Mr. Gradgrind and a 
council of political sages ap’proved of Jem, and it was resolved 
to send him down to Coketown, to become known there and in 
the neighbourhood. Hence the letter Jem had last night shown 


HARD TIMES. 


II3 

to Mrs. Sparsit, which Mr. Bounderby now held in his hand ; 
superscribed, “Josiah Bounderby, Esquire, Banker, Coketown. 
Specially to introduce James Harthouse, Esquire. Thomas 
Gradgrind.” 

Within an hour of the receipt of this dispatch and Mr. James 
Harthouse’s card, Mr. Bounderby put on his hat and went down 
to the Hotel. There he found Mr. James Harthouse looking 
out of window, in a state of mind so disconsolate, that he was 
already half disposed to “ go in ” for something else. 

“My name, sir,” said his visitor, “is Josiah Bounderby, of 
Coketown.” 

Mr. James Harthouse was very happy indeed (though he 
scarcely looked so), to have a pleasure he had long expected. 

“ Coketown, sir,” said Bounderby, obstinately taking a chair, 
‘‘is not the kind of place you have been accustomed to. 
Therefore, if you will allow me — or whether you will or not, 
for I am a plain man — I’ll tell you something about it before 
we go any further.” 

Mr. Harthouse would be charmed. 

“Don’t be too sure of that,” said Bounderby. “I don’t 
promise it. First of all, you see our smoke. That’s meat and 
drink to us. It’s the healthiest thing in the world in all respects, 
and particularly for the lungs. If you are one of those who 
want us to consume it, I differ from you. We are not going to 
wear the bottoms of our boilers out any faster than we wear 
’em out now, for all the humbugging sentiment in Great Britain 
and Ireland.” 

By way of “going in” to the fullest extent, Mr. Harthouse 
rejoined, “Mr. Bounderby, I assure you I am entirely and com- 
pletely of your way of thinking. On conviction.” 

“ I am glad to hear it,” said Bounderby. “ Now, you have 
heard a lot of talk about the work in our mills, no doubt. You 
have ? Very good. I’ll state the fact of it to you. It’s the 
pleasantest work there is, and it’s the lightest work there is, 
and it’s the best paid work there is. More than that, we couldn’t 
improve the mills themselves, unless we laid down Turkey car- 
pets on the floors. Which we’re not a-going to do.” 

“ Mr. Bounderby, ])erfectly right.” 

“ Lastly,” said Bounderby, “ as to our Hands. There’s not 
a Hand in this town, sir, man, woman, or child, but has one 
ultimate object in life. That object is, to be fed on turtle soup 
and venison with a gold spoon. Now, they’re not a-going — 
none of ’em— ever to be fed on turtle soup and venison with 
a gold spoon. And now you know the place.” 


HA/^D TIMES. 


II4 

Mr. Harthouse professed himself in the hightest degree in- 
structed and refreshed, by this condensed epitome of the whole 
Coketown question. 

“Why, you see,” replied Mr. Bounderby, “it suits my dispo- 
sition to have a full understanding with a man, particularly with 
a public man, when 1 make his acquaintance. I have only one 
thing more to say to you, Mr. Harthouse, before assuring you 
of the pleasure with which I shall respond, to the utmost of my 
poor ability, to my friend Tom Gradgrind’s* letter of introduc- 
tion. You are a man of family. Don’t you deceive yourself 
by supposing for a moment that I am a man of family. I am 
a bit of dirty riff-raff and a genuine scrap of tag, rag, and bob- 
tail.”. 

If anything could have exalted Jem’s interest in Mr. Bound- 
erby, it would have been this very circumstance. Or, so he 
told him. 

“ So now,” said Bounderby, “ we may shake hands on equal 
terms. I say, equal terms, because although I know what I 
am, and the exact depth of the gutter I have lifted myself out 
of, better than any man does, I am as proud as you are. I am 
just as proud as you are. Having now asserted my independ- 
ence, in a proper manner, I may come to how do you find 
yourself, and 1 hope you’re pretty well.” 

The better, Mr. Harthouse gave him to understand as they 
shook hands, for the salubrious air of Coketown. Mr. Boun- 
derby received the answer with favour. 

“ Perhaps you know,” said he, “ or perhaps you don’t know, 
I married Tom Gradgrind’s daughter. If you have nothing 
better to do than to walk up town with me, I shall be glad to 
introduce you to Tom Gradgrind’s daughter.” 

“ Mr. Bounderby,” said Jem, “ you anticipate my dearest 
wishes.”- 

They went out without further discourse ; and Mr., Bounderby 
piloted the new acquaintance who so strongly contrasted with 
him, to the private red brick dwelling, with the black outside 
shutters, the green inside blinds, and the black street door up 
the two white steps. In the drawing-room of which mansion, 
there presently entered to them the most remarkable girl Mr. 
James Harthouse had ever seen. She was so constrained, and 
yet so careless ; so reserved, and yet so watchful ; so cold and 
])roud, and yet so sensitively ashamed of her husband’s braggart 
humility — from which she shrunk as if every example of it- were 
a cut or a blow ; that it was quite a new sensation to observe 
her. In face she was no less remarkable than in manner. Her 


TIMES. 


II5 

features were handsome ; but their natural play was so locked 
up, that it seemed impossible to guess at their genuine expres- 
sion. Utterly indifferent, perfectly self-reliant, never at a loss, 
and yet never at her ease, with her figure in company with them 
there, and her mind apparently quite alone — it was of no use 
“going in” yet awhile to comprehend this girl, for she batfled 
all penetration. 

From the mistress of the house, the visitor glanced to the 
house itself. There was no mute sign of a woman in the room. 
No'graceful little adornment, no fanciful little device, however 
trvial, anywhere expressed her infiuence. Cheerless and com- 
fortless, boastfully and doggedly rich, there the room stared at 
its present occupants, unsoftened and unrelieved by the least 
trace of any womanly occupation. As Mr. Bounderby stood in 
the midst of his household gods, so those unrelenting divinities 
occupied their places around Mr. Bounderby, and they were 
worthy of one another, and well matched. 

“ This, sir,” said Bounderby, “ is my wife, Mrs. Bounderby ; 
Tom Gradgrind’s eldest daughter. Loo, Mr. James Harthouse. 
Mr. Harthouse has joined your father’s muster-roll. If he is 
not Tom Gradgrind’s colleague before long, 1 believe we shall 
at least hear of him in connexion with one of our neighbouring 
towns. You observe, Mr. Harthouse, that my wife is my junior. 
I don’t know what she saw in me to marry me, but she saw 
something in me, I suppose, or she wouldn’t have married me. 
She has lots of expensive knowledge, sir, political and otherwise. 
If you want to cram for anything, I should be troubled to rec- 
ommend you to a better adviser than Loo Bounderby.” 

To a more agreeable adviser, or one from whom he would 
be more likely to learn, Mr. Harthouse could never be recom- 
mended. 

“ Come ! ” said his host. “ If you’re in the complimentary 
line, you’ll get on here, for you’ll meet with no competition. I 
have never been in the way of learning compliments myself, 
and I don’t profess to understand the art of paying ’em. In 
fact, despise ’em. But, your bringing-up was different from 
mine ; mine was a real thing, by George ! You’re a gentleman, 
and I don’t pretend to be one. I am Josiah Bounderby of 
Coketown, and that’s enough for me. However, though I am 
not influenced by manners and station. Loo Bounderby maybe. 
She hadn’t my advantages — disadvantages you would call ’em, 
but I call ’em advantages— so you’ll not waste your power, I 
dare say.” 

“ Mr. Bounderby,” said Jem, turning with a smile to Louisa, 


TIMES. 


I l6 

“is a noble animal in a comparatively natural state, quite free 
from the harness in which a conventional hack like myself 
works.” 

“ You respect Mr. Bounderby very much,” she quietly re- 
turned. “ It is natural that you should.” 

He was disgracefully thrown out, for a gentleman who had 
seen so much of the world, and thought, “Now how am I to 
take this?” 

“ You are going to devote yourself, as I gather from what 
Mr. Bounderby has said, to the service of your country. You 
have made uj) your mind,” said Louisa, still standing before him 
where she had first stopped — in all the singular contrariety of her 
self-possession, and her being obviously very ill at ease — “ to 
show the nation the way out of all its difficulties.” 

“ Mrs. Bounderby,” he returned, laughing, “ upon my honour, 
no. I will make no such pretence to you. I have seen a little, 
here and there, up and down ; I have found it all to be very 
worthless, as everybody has, and as some confess they have, 
and some do not ; and I am going in for your respected father’s 
opinions — really because ] have no choice of opinions, and may 
as well back them as anything else.” 

“ Have you none of your own ? ” asked Louisa. 

“ I have not so much as the slightest predilection left. 1 as- 
sure you I attach not the least importance to any opinions. 
The result of the varieties of boredom 1 have undergone, is a 
conviction (unless conviction is too industrious a word for the 
lazy sentiment 1 entertain on the subject), that any set of ideas 
will do just as much good as any other '-et, and just as much 
harm as any other set. There’s an Engh’sh family with a charm- 
ing Italian motto. What will be, will be. It’s the only truth 
going !”_ . 

This vicious assumption of honesty in dishonesty — a vice so- 
dangerous, so deadly, and so common — seemed, he observed, a 
little to impress her in his favour. He followed up the advan- 
tage, by saying in his pleasantest manner : a manner to which she 
might attach as much or as little meaning as she pleased : “ The 
side that can prove anything in a line of units, tens, hundreds, and 
thousands, Mrs. Bounderby, seems to me to afford the most fun, 
and to give a man the best chance. I am quite as much at- 
tached to it as if I believed it. I am quite ready to go in for 
it, to the same extent as if 1 believed it. And what more could 
I possibly do, if I did believe it ! ” 

“You are a singular politician,” said I>ouisa. 

“ Pardon nie ; I have not even that merit. We are the 


I/A/^D TIMES. 


II7 

largest party in the state, I assure you, Mrs. Bounderby, if we 
all fell out of our adopted ranks and were reviewed together.” 

Mr. Bounderby, who had been in danger of bursting in 
silence, interposed here with a project for postponing the 
family dinner till half-past six, and taking Mr. James Hart- 
house in the meantime on a round of visits to the voting and 
interesting notabilities of Coketovvn and its vicinity. The 
round of visits was made ; and Mr. James Harthouse, with a 
discreet use of his blue coaching, came off triumphantly, 
though with a considerable accession of boredom. 

In the evening, he found the dinner-table laid for four, but 
they sat down only three. It was an appropriate occasion for 
Mr. Bounderby to discuss the flavour of the hap ’orth of stewed 
eels he had purchased in the streets at eight years old ; and 
also of the inferior water, specially used for laying the dust, 
with which he had washed down that repast. He likewise en- 
tertained his guest over the soup and fish, with the calculation 
that he (Bounderby) had eaten in his youth at least three horses 
under the guise of polonies and saveloys. These recitals, Jem, 
in a languid manner, received with “ charming ! ” every now 
and then ; and they probably would have decided him to “ go 
in ”^for Jerusalem again to-morrow morning, had he been less 
curious respecting Louisa. 

“ Is there nothing,” he thought, glancing at her as she sat at 
the head of the table, where her youthful figure, small and 
slight, but very graceful, looked as pretty as it looked mis- 
placed ; “is there nothing that will move that face? ” 

Yes ! By Jupiter, there was something, and here it was, in 
an unexpected shape ! Tom appeared. She changed as the 
door opened, and broke into a beaming smile. 

A beautiful smile. Mr. James Harthouse might not have 
thought so much of it, but that he had wondered so long at 
her impassive face. She put out her hand — a pretty little soft 
hand ; and her fingers closed upon her brother’s, as if she 
would have carried them to her lips. 

“Ay, ay?” thought the visitor. “This whelp is the only 
creature she cares for. So, so ! ” 

The whelp was presented, and took his chair. The appella- 
tion was not flattering, but not unmerited. 

“ When I was your age, young Tom,” said Bounderby, “ I 
was punctual, or I got no dinner ! ” 

“ When you were my age,” returned Tom, “ you hadn’t a 
wrong balance to get right, and hadn’t to dress afterwards.” 
“ Never mind that now,” said Bounderby. 


Ii8 


TIMES. 


“ Well, then,” grumbled Tom. “ Don’t begin with me.” 

“.Mrs. Bounderby,” said Harthoiise,' perfectly hearing this 
under-strain as it went on; “your brother’s face is quite 
familiar to me. Can I have seen him abroad ? Or at some 
public school, perhaps ? ” 

“ No,” she returned, quite interested, “ he has never been 
abroad yet, and was educated here, at home. Tom, love, I 
am telling Mr. Harthouse that he never saw you abroad.” 

“ No such luck, sir,” said Tom. 

There was little enough in him to brighten her face, for he 
was a sullen young fellow, and ungracious in his manner even 
to her. So much the greater must have been the solitude of 
her heart, and her need of some one on whom to bestow it. 

“ So much the more is this whelp the only creature she has 
ever cared for,” thouglit Mr. James Harthouse, turning it over 
and over. “ So much the more. So much the more.” 

Both in his sister’s presence, and after she had left the room, 
the whelp took no pains to hide his contempt for Mr. Boun- 
derby, whenever he could indulge it without the observation 
of that independent man, by making wry faces, or shutting 
one eye. Without responding to these telegraphic communica- 
tions, Mr. Harthouse encouraged him much in the course of 
the evening, and showed an unusual liking for him. At last, 
when he rose to return to his hotel, and was a little doubtful 
whether he knew the way by night, the whelp immediately 
proffered his services as guide, and turned out with him to 
escort him thither. 


CHAPTER HI. 



The Whelp. 

|T was very remarkable that a young gentleman who had 
been brought up under one continuous system of unnat- 
ural restraint, should be a hypocrite ; but it was certainly 
the case with Tom. It was very strange that a young 
gentleman who had never been left to his own guidance for 
five consecutive minutes, should be incapable at last of govern- 
ing himself; but so it was with Tom. It was altogether unac- 
countable that a young gentleman whose imagination had been 
strangled in his cradle, should be still inconvenienced by its 


TIMES. 


119 

ghost in the form of grovelling sensualities ; but such a mon- 
ster, beyond all doubt, was Tom. 

“Do you smoke?’-’ asked Mr. James Harthouse, when they 
came to the hotel. 

“ I believe you ! ” said Tom. 

He could do no less than ask Tom up ; and Tom could do 
no less than go up. What with a cooling drink adapted to the 
weather, but not so weak as cool ; and what with a rarer 
tobacco than was to be bought in those parts ; Tom was soon 
in a highly free and easy state at his end of the sofa, and more 
than ever disposed to admire his new friend at the other end. 

Tom blew his smoke aside, after he had been smoking a 
little while, and took an observation of his friend. “ He don’t 
seem to care about his dress,” thought Tom, “and yet how 
t capitally he does it. What an easy swell he is ! ” 

Mr. James Harthouse, happening to catch Tom’s eye, re- 
marked that he drank nothing, and filled his glass with his 
, own negligent hand. 

“ Thank’ee,” said Tom. “ Thank’ee. Well, Mr. Harthouse 
I hope you have had about a dose of old Bounderby to-night.” 
Tom said this with one eye shut up again, and looking over 
. his glass knowingly, at his entertainer. 

“ A very good fellow indeed ! ” returned Mr. James Hart- 
house. 

“You think so, don’t you?” said Tom. And shut up his 
eye again. 

Mr. James Harthouse smiled ; and rising from his end of 
the sofa, and lounging with his back against the chimney- 
. piece, so that he stood before the empty fire-grate as he smoked, 
in front of Tom and looking down at him, observed : 

“ What a comical brother-in-law you are ! ” 

“ What a comical brother-in-law old Bounderby is, I think 
you mean,” said Tom. 

“ You are a piece of caustic, Tom,” retorted Mr. James 
Harthouse. 

There was something so very agreeable in being so intimate 
with such a waistcoat; in being called Tom, in such an in- 
timate way, by such a voice ; in being on such off-hand terms 
so soon with such a pair of whiskers; that Tom was un- 
commonly pleased with himself. 

“ Oh ! I don’t care for old Bounderby,” said he, “ if you 
' mean that. I have always called old Bounderby by the same 
name when I have talked about him, and I have always 
thought of him in the same way. I am not going to begin to 


120 


J7A7^D TIMES, 


be polite now, about old Bounderby. It would be rather late 
in the day.” 

“Don’t mind me,” returned James; “but take care when 
his wife is by, you know.” 

“ His wife ? ” said Tom. “ My sister Loo ? O yes ! ” And 
he laughed, and took a little more of the cooling drink. 

James Harthouse continued to lounge in the same place and 
attitude, smoking his cigar in his own easy way, and looking 
pleasantly at the whelp, as if he knew himself to be a kind of 
agreeable demon who had only to hover over him, and he 
must give up his whole soul if required. It certainly did seem 
that the whelp yielded to this influence. He looked at his 
companion sneakingly, he looked at him admiringly, he looked 
at him boldly, and put up one leg on the sofa. 

‘‘My sister Loo?” said Tom. She never cared for old 
Bounderby. ” 

“That’s the past tense, Tom,” returned Mr. James Hart- 
house, striking the ash from his cigar with his little finger. 

“We are in the present tense, now.” 

“Verb neuter, not to care. Indicative mood, present tense. . 
First person singular, I do not care ; second person singular, 
thou dost not care ; third person singular, she does not care,” 
returned Tom. 

“ Good ! Very quaint ! ” said his friend. “ Though you don’t 
mean it.” 

“But I ^/^7mean it,” cried Tom. “Upon my honour ! Why, 
you won’t tell me, Mr. Harthouse, that you really suppose my 
sister Loo does care for old Bounderby.” 

“ My dear fellow,” returned the other, “ what am I bound to 
suppose, when I find two married people living in harmony and 
happiness ? ” 

Tom had by this time got both his legs on the sofa. If his 
second leg had not been already there when he was called a 
dear fellow, he would have put it up at that great stage of the 
conversation. Feeling it necessary to do something then, he 
stretched himself out at greater length, and, reclining with the 
back of his head on the end of the sofa, and smoking with an 
infinite assumption of negligence, turned his common face, and 
not too sober eyes, towards the face looking down upon him so 
carelessly yet so potently. 

“ You know our governor, Mr. Harthouse,” said Tom, “ and 
therefore you needn’t be surprised that Loo married old Bound- 
erby. She never had a lover, and the governor proposed old 
Bounderby, and she took him.” 


I/AJ^D TIMES. 


I2I 


“Very dutiful in your interesting sister,” said Mr. James 
Harthouse. 

“Yes, but she wouldn’t have been as dutiful, and it would' 
not have come off as easily,” returned the whelp, “ if it hadn’t 
been for me.” 

The tempter merely lifted his eyebrows ; but the whelp was 
obliged to go on. 

“ / persuaded her,” he said, with an edifying air of superiority. 
“ I was stuck into old Bounderby’s bank (where I never wanted 
to be), and I knew I should get into scrapes there, if she put 
old Bounderby’s pipe out ; so I told her my wishes, and she 
came into them. She would do anything for me. It was very 
game of her, wasn’t it ? ” 

“It was charming, Tom ! ” 

1 Not that it was altogether so important to her as it was to 
me,” continued Tom coolly, “because my liberty and comfort, 
and perhaps my getting on, depended on it ; and she had no 
other lover, and staying at home was like staying in jail — espe- 
cially when I was gone. It wasn’t as if she gave up another lover 
for old Bounderby ; but still it was a good thing in her.”, 

“ Perfectly delightful. And she gets on so placidly.” 

“ Oh,” returned Tom, with contemptuous patronage, “ she’s 
, a regular girl. A girl can get on anywhere. She has settled 
down to the life, and she don’t mind. It does just as well as 
another. Besides, though Loo is a girl, she’s not a common 
I sort of girl. She can shut herself up within herself, and think 
'■ — as I have often known her sit and watch the fire — for an hour 
1 at a stretch.” 

I “Ay, ay? Has resources of her own,” said Harthouse, smok- 
I ing quietly. 

“Not so much of that as you may suppose,” returned Tom ; 
i “ for our governor had her crammed with all sorts of dry bones 
! and sawdust. It’s his system.” 

“ Formed his daughter on his own model?” suggested Hart- 
house. 

“ His daughter ? Ah ! and everybody else. Why he formed 
Me that way,” said Tom. 

“ Impossible ! ” 

“ He did though,” said Tom, shaking his head. “ I mean 
to say, Mr. Harthouse, that when I first left home and went to old 
Bounderby’s, I was as flat as a warming-pan, and knew no more 
about life, than any oyster does.” 

“Come, Tom ! I can hardly believe that. A joke’s a joke.” 

“ Upon my soul ! ” said the whelp. “ I am serious ; I am in- 
6 


122 


HARD TIMES. 


deed ! ” He smoked with great gravity and dignity for a little 
while, and then added, in a highly complacent tone. “ Oh ! I 
have picked up a little, since. I don’t deny that. But I have 
done it myself ; no thanks to the governor.” 

“ And your intelligent sister ? ” 

“My intelligent sister is about where she was. She used to 
complain to me that she had nothing to fall back upon, that girls 
usually fall back upon ; and I don’t see how she is to have got 
over that since. But she don’t mind,” he sagaciously added, 
puffing at his cigar again. “ Girls can always get on somehow.” 

“Calling at the Bank yesterday evening, for Mr. Bounderby’s 
address, 1 found an ancient lady there, who seems to entertain 
great admiration for your sister,” observed Mr. James Harthouse, 
throwing away the last small remnant of the cigar he had now 
smoked out. 

“ Mother Sparsit ? ” said Tom. “ What ! you have seen her 
already, have you ? ” 

His friend nodded. Tom took his cigar out of his mouth, to 
shut up his eye (which had grown rather unmanageable) with 
the greS-ter expression, and to tap his nose several times with 
his finger. 

“ Mother Sparsit’s feeling for Loo is more than admiration, I 
should think,” said Tom. “ Say affection and devotion. Mother 
Sparsit never set her cap at Bounderby when he was a bachelor. 
Oh no ! ” 

These were the last words spoken by the whelp, before a giddy 
drowsiness came upon him, followed by complete oblivion. He 
was roused from the latter state by an uneasy dream of being 
stirred up with a boot, and also of a voice saying: “Come, it’s 
late. Be off!” 

“ Well ! ” he said, scrambling from the sofa. “ I must take 
my leave of you though. I say. Yours is very good tobacco. 
But it’s too mild.” 

“ Yes, it’s too mild,” returned his entertainer. 

It’s — it’s ridiculously mild,” said Tom. “ Where’s the door ? 
Good night ! ” 

He had another odd dream of being taken by a waiter through 
a mist, which, after giving him some trouble and difficulty, re- 
solved itself into the main street, in which he stood alone. He 
then walked home pretty easily, though not yet free from an im- 
pression of the presence and influence of his new friend — as if 
he were lounging somewhere in the air, in the same negligent 
attitude, regarding him with the same look. 

The whelp went home, and went to bed. If he had any sense 


HARD TIMES. 


23 


of what he had done that night, and had been less of a whelp 
and more of a brother, he might have turned short on the road, 
might have gone down to the ill-smelling river that was dyed 
black, might have gone to bed in it for good and all, and have 
curtained his head for ever with its filthy waters. 


CHAPTER IV. 

Men and Brothers. 

H my friends, the down-trodden operatives of Coke- 
town ! Oh my friends and fellow-countrymen, the 
slaves of an iron-handed and grinding despotism ! Oh 
my friends and fellow-sufferers, and fellow-workmen, 
and fellow-men ! 1 tell you that the hour is come, when we 

must rally round one another as One united power, and crumble 
into dust the oppressors that too long have battened upon 
the plunder of our families, upon the sweat of our brows, upon 
the labour of our hands, upon the strength of our sinews, upon 
the God-created glorious rights of Humanity, and upon the holy 
and eternal privileges of Brotherhood ! ” 
j “ Good ! ” “ Hear, hear, hear ! ” “ Hurrah ! ” and other 

cries, arose in many voices from various parts of the densely 
, crowded and suffocatingly close Hall, in which the orator, 

I perched on a stage, delivered himself of this and what other 
froth and fume he had in him. He had declaimed himself into 
a violent heat, and was as hoarse as he was hot. By dint of 
roaring at the top of his voice under a flaring gas-light, clenching 
his fists, knitting his brows, setting his teeth, and pounding with 
his arms, he had taken so much out of himself by this time, 
that he was brought to a stop, and called for a glass of water. 

As he stood there, trying to quench his fiery face with his 
drink of water, the comparison between the orator and the crowd 
of attentive faces turned towards him, was extremely to his dis- 
advantage. Judging him by Nature’s evidence, he was above 
the mass in very little but the stage on which he stood. In 
many great respects he was essentially below them. He was 
not so honest, he was not so manly, he was not so good- 
humoured ; he substituted cunning for their simplicity, and pas- 
sion for their safe solid sense. An ill-made high-shouldered man, 
with lowering brows, and his features crushed into an habitually 




124 


//AJ^D TIMES. 


sour expression, he contrasted most unfavourably, even in his 
mongrel dress, with the great body of his hearers in their plain 
working clothes. Strange as it always is to consider any as- 
sembly in the act of submissively resigning itself to the dreari- 
ness of some complacent iierson, lord or commoner, whom three- 
fourths of it could, by no human means, raise out of the slough 
of inanity to their own intellectual level, it was particularly 
strange, and it was even particularly affecting, to see this crowd of 
earnest faces, whose honesty in the main no competent observer 
free from bias could doubt, so agitated by such a leader. 

Good ! Hear, hear ! Hurrah ! The eagerness, both of at- 
tention and intention, exhibited in all the countenances, made 
them a most impressive sight. There was no carelessness, 
no languor, no idle curiosity ; none of the many shades of in- 
difference to be seen in all other assemblies, visible for one 
moment there. That every man felt his condition to be, some- 
how or other, worse than it might be ; that every man consid- 
ered it incumbent on him to join the rest, towards the making 
of it better ; that every man felt his only hope to be in his ally- 
ing himself to the comrades by whom he was surrounded ; and 
that in this belief, right or wrong (unhappily wrong then), the 
whole of that crowd were gravely, deeply, faithfully in earnest ; 
must have been as plain to any one who chose to see what was 
there, as the bare beams of the roof, and the whitened brick 
walls. Nor could any such spectator fail to know in his own 
breast, that these men, through their very delusions, showed 
great qualities, susceptible of being turned to the happiest and 
best account ; and that to pretend (on the strength of sweep- 
ing axioms, howsoever cut and dried) that they went astray 
wholly without cause, and of their own irrational wills, was to 
pretend that there could be smoke without fire, death without 
birth, harvest without seed, anything or everything produced 
from nothing. 

The orator having refreshed himself, wiped his corrugated 
forehead from left to right several times with his handkerchief 
folded into a pad, and concentrated all his revived forces, in a 
sneer of great disdain and bitterness. 

“ But, oh my friends and brothers ! Oh men and English- 
men, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown ! What shall 
we say of that man — that working-man, that I should find it 
necessary so to libel the glorious name — who, being practically 
and well acquainted with the grievances and wrongs of you, the 
injured pith and marrow of this land, and having heard you, with 
a noble and majestic unanimity that will make Tyrants tremble, 


I/A/^n TIMES. 


125 


resolve for to subscribe to the funds of the United Aggregate 
Tribunal, and to abide by the injunctions issued by that body 
for your benefit, whatever they may be — what, I ask you, will 
you say of that working-man, since such I must acknowledge 
him to be, who, at such a time, deserts his post, and sells his 
flag ; who, at such a time, turns a traitor and a craven and a 
recreant ; who, at such a time is not ashamed to make to you 
the dastardly and humiliating avowal that he will hold himself 
aloof, and will nof be one of those associated in the gallant 
stand for Freedom and for Rights ? ” 

The assembly was divided at this point. There were some 
groans and hisses, but the general sense of honour was much 
too strong for the condemnation of a man unheard. “ Be sure 
you’re right, Slackbridge ! ” “Put him up!” ‘^Let’s hear 
him ! ” Such things were said on many sides. P'inally, one 
strong voice called out, “ Is the man heer ? If the man’s heer, 
Slackbridge, let’s hear the man himseln, ’stead o’ yo.” Which 
was received with a round of applause. 

Slackbridge, the orator, looked about him with a withering 
smile ; and, holding out his right hand at arm’s length (as the 
manner of all Slackbridges is), to still the thundering sea, waited 
until there was a profound silence. 

“ Oh my friends and fellow-men ! ” said Slackbridge then, 
shaking his head with violent scorn, “I do not wonder that you, 
the prostrate sons of labour, are incredulous of the existence of 
such a man. But he who sold his birthright for a mess of pot- 
tage existed, and Judas Iscariot existed, and Castlereagh ex- 
isted, and this man exists I ” 

Here, a brief press and confusion near the stage, ended in 
the man himself standing at the orator’s side before the con- 
course. He was pale and a little moved in the face — his lips 
especially showed it ; but he stood quiet, with his left hand at 
his chin, waiting to be heard. There was a chairman to regu- 
late the proceedings, and this functionary now took the case 
into his own hands. 

“ My friends,” said he, “ by virtue o’ my office as your presi- 
dent, I ashes o’ our friend Slackbridge, who may be a little over 
better in this business, to take his seat, whiles this man Stephen 
Blackpool is heern. You all know this man Stephen Black- 
pool. You know him awlung o’ his misfort’ns, and his good 
name.” 

With that, the chairman shook him frankly by the hand, and 
sat down again. Slackbridge likewise sat down, wiping his hot 
forehead — always from left to right, and never the reverse way. 


^126 


HARD TIMES. 


“ My friends,” Stephen began, in the midst of a dead calm, 
“ I ha’ hed what’s been spok’n o’ me, and ’tis likly that I shan’t 
mend it. But I’d liefer you’d hearn the truth concernin myseln, 
fro my lips than fro onny otl>er man’s though I never cud’n 
speak afore so monny, w’out bein moydert and muddled.” 

Slackbridge shook his head as if he would shake it off, in his 
bitterness. 

“ I’m th’ one single Hand in Bounderby’s mill, o’ a’ the men 
theer, as don’t coom in wi’ th’ proposed reg’lations. I canna’ 
coom in wi’ ’em. My friends, I doubt their doin’ yo onny good. 
Licker they’ll do yo hurl.” 

Slackbridge laughed, folded his arms, and frowned sarcas- 
tically. 

“But ’t ant sommuch for that as I stands out. If that were 
aw, I’d coom in wi’ th’ rest. But I ha’ my reasons — mine, yo 
see — for being hindered ; not on’y now, but awlus — awlus — life 
long!” 

Slackbridge jumped up and stood beside him, gnashing and 
tearing. “ Oh my friends, what but this did I tell you ? Oh 
my fellow-countrymen, what warning but this did I give you ? 
And how shows this recreant conduct in a man on whom un- 
equal laws are known to have fallen heavy ? Oh you English- 
men, I ask you how does this subornation show in one of your- 
selves, who is thus consenting to his own undoing and to 
yours, and to your children’s and your children’s children’s ? ” 

There was some applause, and some crying of Shame upon 
the man ; but the greater part of the audience were quiet. 
They looked at Stephen’s worn face, rendered more pathetic by 
the homely emotions it evinced ; and, in the kindness of their 
nature, they were more sorry than indignant. 

“ ’Tis this Delegate’s trade for t’ speak,” said Stephen, “ an 
he’s paid for ’t, and he knows his work. Let him keep to ’t. 
Let him give no heed to what I ha had’n to bear. That’s not 
for him. That’s not for nobbody but me.” 

There was a propriety, not to say a dignity in these words, 
that made the hearers yet more quiet and attentive. The same 
strong voice called out, Slackbridge, let the man be heern, 
and howd thee tongue ! ” Then the place was wonderfully 
still. 

“ My brothers,” said Stephen, whose low voice was distinctly 
heard, “and my fellow-workmen — for that yo are to me, though 
not, as I knows on, to this delegate heer — I ha but a word to 
sen, and I could sen nommore if I was to speak till Strike o’ 
day. I know weel, aw what’s afore me. I know weel that yo 


TIMES. 


127 


are aw resolve to ha nommore ado wi’ a man who is not wi’ yo 
in this matther. I know weel that if I was a lyin parisht i’ th’ 
road, yo’d feel it right to pass me by, as a fon-enner and 
stranger. What I ha getn, I mun mak th’ best on.” 

“Stephen Blackpool,” said the chairman, rising, “think on’t 
agen. Think on ’t once agen, lad, afore thour’t shunned by aw 
owd friends.” 

There was an universal murmur to the same effect, though 
no man articulated a word. Every eye was fixed on Stephen’s 
face. To repent of his determination, would be to take a load 
from all their minds. He looked around him, and knew that it 
was so. Not a grain of anger with them was in his heart; he 
knew them, far below their surface weaknesses and misconcep- 
tions, as no one but their fellow-labourer could. 

“ I ha thowt on ’t, above a bit, sir. I simply canna coom in. 

I mun go th’ way as lays afore me. I mun tak my leave o’ aw 
heer.” 

He made a sort of reverence to them by holding up his arms, 
and stood for the moment in that attitude : not speaking until 
they slowly dropped at his sides. 

“ Monny’s the pleasant word as soom heer has spok’n wi’ 
me ; monny’s the face I see heer, as I first seen when I were 
yoong and lighter heart ’n than now. I ha never had no fratch 
afore, sin ever I were born, wi’ any o’ my like ; Gonnows I ha’ 
none now that’s o’ my makin’. Yo ’ll ca’ me traitor and that — 
yo I mean t’ say,” addressing Slackbridge, “ but ’tis easier to 
ca’ than mak’ out. So let be.” 

He had moved away a pace or two to come down from the 
platform, when he remembered something he had not said, and 
returned again. 

“ Haply,” he said, turning his furrowed face slowly about, . 
that he might as it were individually address the whole audi- 
ence, those both near and distant ; “ haply, when this question 
has been tak’n up and discoosed, there’ll be a threat to turn out 
if I’m let to work among yo. I hope I shall die ere ever such 
a time cooms, and I shall work solitary among yo unless it 
cooms — truly, I mun do ’t, my friends ; not to brave yo, but to 
live. I ha nobbut work to live by ; and wheerever can I go, I 
who ha worked sin I were no heighth at aw, in Coketown heer ? 
I mak’ no complaints o’ bein turned to the wa’, o’ bein out- 
casten and overlooken fro this this time forrard, but I hope I 
shall be let to work. If there is any right for me at aw, my 
friends, I think ’tis that.” 

Not a word was spoken. Not a sound was audible in the 


28 


ITAH^D TIMES. 


building, but the slight rustle of men moving a little apart, all 
along the centre of the room, to open a means of passing out, 
to the man with whom they had all bound themselves to re- 
nounce companionship. Looking at no one, and going his way 
with a lowly steadiness upon him that asserted nothing and 
sought nothing, Old Stephen, with all his troubles on his head, 
left the scene. 

Then Slackbridge, who had kept his oratorical arm extended 
during the going out, as if he were repressing with infinite solic- 
itude and by a wonderful moral power the vehement passions 
of the multitude, applied himself to raising their spirits. Had 
not' the Roman Brutus, oh my British countrymen, condemned 
his son to death ; and had not the Spartan mothers, oh my soon 
to be victorious friends, driven their flying children on the points 
of their enemies’ swords ? Then was it not the sacred duty of 
the men of Coketown, with forefathers before them, an admir- 
ing world in company with them, and a posterity to come after 
them, to hurl out traitors from the tents they had pitched in a 
sacred and a Godlike cause ? The winds of Heaven answered 
Yes ; and bore Yes, east, west, north, and south. And conse- 
quently three cheers for the United Aggregate Tribunal ! 

Slackbridge acted as fugleman, and gave the time. The 
multitude of doubtful faces (a little conscience-stricken) bright- 
ened at the sound, and took it up. Private feeling must yield 
to the common cause. Hurrah ! The roof yet vibrated with 
the cheering, when the assembly dispersed. 

Thus easily did Stephen Blackpool fall into the loneliest of 
lives, the life of solitude among a familiar crowd. The stranger 
in the land who looks into ten thousand faces for some answer- 
ing look and never finds’it, is in cheering society as compared 
with him who passes ten averted faces daily, that were once the 
countenances of friends. Such ex[)erience was to be Stephen’s 
now, in every waking moment of his life ; at his work, on his 
way to it and from it, at his door, at his window, everywhere. 
By general consent, they even avoided that side of the street on 
which he habitually walked ; and left it, of all the working men, 
to him only. 

He had been for many years, a quiet silent man, associating 
but little with other men, and used to companionship with his 
own thoughts. He had never known before the strength of the 
want in his heart for the frequent recognition of a nod, a look, 
a word ; or the immense amount of relief that had been poured 
into it by drops, through such small means. It was even harder 
than he could have believed possible, to separate in his own 


JIA/^D TIMES, 


129 

conscience his abandonment by all his fellows, from a baseless 
sense of shame and disgritce. 

The first four days of his endurance were days so long and 
heavy, that he began to be appalled by the prospect before him. 
Not only did he see no Rachael all the time, but he avoided 
every chance of seeing her ; for, although he knew that the 
prohibition did not yet formally extend to the women working 
in the factories, he found that some of them with whom he was 
acquainted were changed to him, and he feared to try others, 
and dreaded that Rachael might be even singled out from the 
rest if she were seen in his company. So, he had been quite 
alone during the four days, and had spoken to no one, when, as 
he was leaving his work at night, a young man of a very light 
complexion accosted him in the street. 

“Your name’s Blackpool, ain’t it?” said the young man. 

Stephen coloured to find himself with his hat in his hand, in 
his gratitude for being spoken to, or in the suddenness of it, or 
both. He made a feint of adjusting the lining, and said, “ Yes.” 

“You are the Hand they have sent to Coventry, I mean?” 
said Bitzer, the very light young man in question. 

Stephen answered “ Yes,” again. 

“ I supposed so, from their all appearing to keep away from 
you. Mr. Bounderby wants to speak to you. You know his 
house, don’t you ? ” 

Stephen said “Yes,” again. , 

“ Then go straight up there, will you ? ” said Bitzer. “ You’re 
expected, and have only to tell the servant it’s you. I belong 
to the Bank ; so, if you go straight up without me (I was sent 
to fetch you), you’ll save me a walk.” 

Stephen, whose way had been in the contrary direction, turned 
about, and betook himself as in duty bound, to the red brick 
castle of the giant Bounderby. 


CHAPTER V. 

Men and Masters. 

Stephen,” said Bounderby, in his windy manner, 
lat’s this I hear ? What have these pests of the 
1 been doing to you? Come in and speak up.” 
was into the drawing-room that he was thus bid- 
den. A tea-table was set out; and Mr. Boundeiby’s young 
6 * 



130 


//A/?D TIMES. 


wife, and her brother, and a great gentleman from London, 
were present. To whom Stephen made his obeisance, closing 
the door and standing near it, with his hat in his hand. 

“ This is the man I was telling you about, Harthouse,” said 
Mr. Bounderby. The gentleman he addressed, who was talk- 
ing to Mrs. Bounderby on the sofa, got up, saying in an indo- 
lent way, “ Oh really ? ” and dawdled to the hearthrug where 
Mr. Bounderby stood. 

“ Now,” said Bounderby, “ speak up ! ” 

After the four days he had passed, this address fell rudely and 
discordantly on Stephen’s ear. Besides being a rough handling 
of his wounded mind, it seemed to assume that he really was 
the self-interested deserter he had been called. 

“ What were it, sir,” said Stephen, “ as yo were pleased to 
want wi’ me ? ” 

“ Why, I have told you,” returned Bounderby. “ Speak up 
like a man, since you are a man, and tell us about yourself and 
this Combination.” 

“ Wi’ yor pardon, sir,” said Stephen Blackpool, “ I ha’ nowt 
to sen about it.” 

Mr. Bounderby, who was always more or less like a Wind, 
finding something in his way here, began to blow at it directly. 

“Now, look here, Harthouse,” said he, “here’s a specimen 
of ’em. When this man was here once before, I warned this 
man against the mischievous^ strangers who are always about — 
and who ought to be hanged wherever they are found — and I 
told this man that he was going in the wrong direction. Now, 
would you believe it, that although they have put this mark 
upon him, he is such a slave to them still, that he’s afraid to 
open his lips about them ? ” 

“ I sed as I had nowt to sen, sir ; not as I was fearfo’ o’ 
openin’ my lips.” 

“You said. Ah ! I know what you said ; more than that, I 
know what you mean, you see. Not always the same thing, by 
the Lord Harry ! Quite different things. You had better tell 
us at once, that that fellow Slackbridge is not in the town, stir- 
ring up the people to mutiny ; and that he is not a regular qual- 
ified leader of the people : that is, a most confounded scoundrel. 
You had better tell us so at once ; you can’t deceive me. You 
want to tell us so. Why don’t you ? ” 

“I’m as sooary as yo, sir, when the people’s leaders is bad,” 
said Stephen, shaking his head. “They taks such as offers. 
Ha])ly ’tis na’ the sma’est o’ their misfortuns when they can get 
no better.” 


JIAI^D TIMES. 


131 


The wind began to get boisterous. 

“Now, you’ll think this pretty well, Harthouse,” said Mr. 
Bounderby. “You’ll think this tolerably strong. You’ll say, 
upon my soul this is a tidy specimen of what my friends have 
to deal with ; but this is nothing, sir ! You shall hear me ask 
this man a question. Pray, Mr. Blackpool” — wind springing 
up very fast — “may I take the liberty of asking you how it hap- 
pens that you refused to be in this Combination ? ” 

“ How ’t happens ? ” 

“ Ah ! ” said Mr. Bounderby, with his thumbs in the arms of 
his coat, and jerking his head and shutting his eyes in confi- 
dence with the opposite wall : “ how it happens.” 

“ I’d leefer not coom to ’t, sir ; but sin you put th’ question 
— an not want’n t’ be ill-manner’n — I’ll answer. I ha passed a 
promess.” 

“Not to me, you know,” said Bounderby. (Gusty weather 
with deceitful calms. One now prevailing.) 

“O no, sir. Not to yo.” 

“ As for me, any consideration for me has had just nothing 
at all to do with it,” said Bounderby, still in confidence with 
the wall. “ If only Josiah Bounderby of Coketown had been 
in question, you would have joined and made no bones about 
it ? ” 

“Why yes, sir. ’Tis true.” 

“Though he knows,” said Mr. Bounderby, now blowing a 
gale, “ that these are a set of rascals and rebels whom transpor- 
tation is too good for ! Now, Mr. Harthouse, you have been 
knocking about in the world some time. Did you ever meet 
with anything like that man out of this blessed country ? ” And 
Mr. Bounderby pointed him out for inspection, with an angry 
finger. 

“ Nay, ma’am,” said Stephen Blackpool, staunchly protesting 
against the words that had been used, and instinctively address- 
ing himself to Louisa, after glancing at her face. “ Not rebels, 
nor yet rascals. Nowt o’ th’ kind, ma’am, nowt o’ th’ kind. 
'Fhey’ve not doon me a kindness, ma’am, as I know and feel. 
But there’s not a dozen men amoong ’em, ma’am — a dozen ? 
Not six — but what belives as he has doon his duty by the rest 
and by himseln. God forbid as 1, that ha known, and had’n 
experience o’ these men aw my life — I, that ha’ ett’n an droonken 
wi’ em, an seet’n wi’ em, and toil’n wi’ em, and lov’n ’em, should 
fail fur to stan by ’em wi’ the truth, let ’em ha doon to me what 
they may ! ” 

He spoke with the rugged earnestness of his place and char- 


132 


I/ARD TIMES. 


acter — deepened perhaps by a proud consciousness that he was 
faithful to his class under all their mistrust ; but he fully remem- 
bered where he was, and did not even raise his voice. 

“ No ma’am, no. They’re true to one another, faithfo’ to 
one another, fectionate to one another, e’en to death. Be poor 
amoong ’em, be sick amoong ’em, grieve amoong ’em for onny 
o’ th’ monny causes that carries grief to the poor man’s door, 
an they’ll be tender wi’ yo, gentle wi’ yo, comfortable wi’ yo, 
Chrisen wi’ yo. Be sure o’ that, ma’am. They’d be riven to 
bits, ere ever they’d be different.” 

“In short,” said Mr. Bounderby, “it’s because they are so 
full of virtues that they have turned you adrift. Go through 
with it while you are about it. Out with it.” 

“ How ’tis, ma’am,” resumed Stephen, appearing still to find 
his natural refuge in Louisa’s face, “that what is best in us fok, 
seems to turn us most to trouble an misfort’n an mistake, I 
dunno. But ’tis so. I know ’tis, as I know the heavens is over 
me ahint the smoke. We’re patient too, and wants in general 
to do right. An’ I canna think the fawt is aw wi’ us.” 

“Now, my friend,” said Mr. Bounderby, whom he could not 
have exasperated more, quite unconscious of it though he was, 
than by seeming to appeal to any one else, “ if you will favour 
me with your attention for half a minute, I should like to have 
a word or two with you. You said just now, that you had 
nothing to tell us about this business. You are quite sure of 
that before we go any further ? ” 

“ Sir, I am sure on ’t.” 

“ Here’s a gentleman from London present,” Mr. Bounderby 
made a back-handed point at Mr. James Harthouse with his 
thumb, “ Parliament gentleman. I should like him to hear a 
short bit of dialogue between you and me, instead of taking the 
substance of it — for I know precious well, before-hand, what it 
will be ; nobody knows better than I do, take notice ! — instead 
of receiving it on trust, from your mouth.” 

Stephen bent his head to the gentleman from London, and 
showed a rather more troubled mind than usual. He turned 
his eyes involuntarily to his former refuge, but at a look from that 
quarter (expressive though instantaneous) he settled them on 
Mr. Bounderby’s face. 

“Now what do you complain of?” asked Mr. Bounderby. 

‘‘ I ha’ not coom here, sir,” Stephen reminded him, “ to com- 
plain. I coom for' that I were sent for.” 

“ What,” repeated Mr. Bounderby, folding his arms, “do you 
people, in a general way, complain of? ” 


I/ARD TIMES. 


133 

Stephen looked at him with some little irresolution for a mo- 
ment, and seemed to make up his mind. 

“ Sir, I were never good at showin o ’t, though I ha had’n 
my share in feeling o ’t. ’Deed we are in a muddle, sir. I.ook 
round town — so rich as ’tis — and see the numbers o’ people as 
has been broughten into bein heer, fur to weave, an to card, an 
to piece out a livin’, aw the same one way, somehows, twixt 
their cradles and their graves. Look how we live, an wheer 
we live, an in what numbers, an by what chances, and wi’ what 
sameness ; and look how the mills is awlus a goin, and how 
they never works us no nigher to ony dis’ant object — ceptin 
awlus. Death. Look how you considers of us, an writes of us 
an talks of us, an goes up wi’ yor deputations to Secretaries o’ 
State ’bout us, and how yo are awlus right, and how we are awlus 
wTong, and never had’n no reason in us sin ever we were born. 
Look how this ha growen an growen, sir, bigger an bigger, 
broader an broader, harder an harder, fro year to year, fro 
generation unto generation. Who can look on ’t, sir, and fairly 
tell a man ’tis not a muddle ? ” 

“Of course,” said Mr. Bounderby. “Now perhaps you’ll let 
the gentleman know, how you would set this muddle (as you’re 
so fond of calling it) to rights.” 

“ I donno, sir. I canna be expecten to ’t. ’Tis not me as 
should be looked to for that, sir. ’Tis them as is put ovver me, 
and ower aw the rest of us. What do they tak upon themseln, 
sir, if not to do ’t ? ” 

“ I ’ll tell you something towards it, at any rate,” returned 
Mr. Bounderby. “ We will make an example of half a dozen 
Slackbridges. We’ll indict the blackguards for felony, and get 
’em shipped off to penal settlements.” 

Stephen gravely shook his head. 

“ Don’t tell me we won’t, man,” said Mr. Bounderby, by this 
time blowing a hurricane, “ because we will, I tell you !” 

“ Sir,” returned Stephen, with the quiet confidence of absolute 
certainty, “if yo was t’ tak a hundred Slackbridges — aw as 
there is, and aw the number ten times towd — an was t’ sew ’em 
up in separate sacks, an sink ’em in the deepest ocean as were 
made ere ever dry land coom to be, yo’d leave the muddle just 
wheer ’tis. Mischeevous strangers ! ” said Stephen, with an anx- 
ious smile ; “ when ha we not heern, I am sure, sin ever we can 
call to mind, o’ th’ mischeevous strangers ! ’Tis not by them 
the trouble’s made, sir. ’Tis not wi’ them ’t commences. I ha 
no favour for’em — I ha no reason to favour ’em — but ’tis 
hopeless and useless to dream o’ takin them fro their trade, 


^34 


//A/^D TIMES. 


’stead o’ takin their trade fro them ! Aw that’s now about me 
in this room were heer afore I coom, an will be heer when I am 
gone. Put that clock aboard a ship an pack it off to Norfolk 
Island, an the time will go on just the same. So ’tis wi’ Slack- 
bridge every bit.” 

Reverting for a moment to his former refuge, he observed a 
cautionary movement of her eyes towards the door. Stepping 
back, he put his hand upon the lock. But he had not spoken 
out of his own will and desire ; and he felt it in his heart a noble 
return for his late injurious treatment to be faithful to the last 
to those who had repudiated him. He stayed to finish what 
was in his mind. 

“ Sir, I canna, wi’ my little learning an my common way, tell 
the genelman what will be better aw this — though some working 
men o’ this town could, above my powers — but I can tell him 
what 1 know will never do ’t. The strong hand will never 
do ’t. Vict’ry and triumph will never do ’t. Agreeing fur to 
mak one side unnat’rally awlus and for ever right, and toother 
side unnat’rally awlus and forever wrong, will never, never do’t. 
Nor yet lettin alone will never do ’t. Let thousands upon thou- 
sands alone, aw leadin the like lives and aw faw’en into the like 
muddle, and they will be as one, and yo will be as anoother, wi’ 
a black impassable world betwixt yo, just as long or short a 
time as sitch-like misery can last. Not drawin nigh to fok, wi’ 
kindness and patience an cheery ways, that so draws nigh to 
one another in their monny trobles, and so cherishes one 
another in their distresses wi’ what they need themseln — like, I 
humbly believe, as no people the genelman ha seen in aw his 
travels can beat — will never do ’t till th’ Sun turns t’ ice. Most 
o’ aw, ratio ’em as so much Power, and reg’latin ’em as if they 
was figures in a soom, or machines : wi’ out loves and likens, 
wi’out memories and inclinations, wi’out souls to weary and 
souls to hope — when aw goes quiet, draggin on wi’ ’em as if 
they’d nowt o’ th’ kind, an when aw goes onquiet, reproachin 
’em for their want o’ sitch humanly feelins in their dealins wi’ 
yo — this will never do ’t, sir, till God’s work is unmade.” 

Stephen stood with the open door in his hand, waiting to 
know if anything more were expected of him. 

“Just stop a moment,” said Mr. Bounderby, excessively red 
in the face. “ I told you, the last time you were here with a 
grievance, that you had better turn about and come out of that. 
And I also told you, if you remember, that I was up to the gold 
spo’on look-out.” 

“I were not up to ’t myscln, sir; I do assure yo.” 


I/AJi'n TIMES. 


135 


- “Now it’s clear to me,” said Mr. Bounderby, “that you are 
one of those chaps who have always got a grievance. And you 
go about, sowing it and raising crops. That’s the business of 
youf life, my friend.” 

Stephen shook his head, mutely protesting that indeed he had 
other business to do for his life. 

“You are such a waspish, raspish, ill-conditioned chap, you 
see,” said Mr. Bounderby, “ that even your own Union, the men 
who know you best, will have nothing to do with you. I never 
thought those fellows could be right in anything ; but I tell you 
what ! I so far go along with them for a novelty that /’ll have 
nothing to do with you either.” 

Stephen raised his eyes quickly to his face. 

“You can finish off what you’re at,” said Mr. Bounderby, 
with a meaning nod, “ and then go elsewhere.” 

“ Sir, yo know weel,” said Ste])hen expressively, “ that if I 
canna get work wi’ yo, I canna get it elsewheer.” 

The reply was, “ What I know, I know ; and what you know, 
you know. 1 have no more to say about it.” 

Stephen glanced at Louisa again, but her eyes were raised to 
his no more ; therefore, with a sigh, and saying, barely above 
his breath, “ Heaven help us aw in this world ! ” he departed. 


CHAPTER VI. 

Fading Away. 

T was falling dark when Stephen came out of Mr. Boun- 
derby’s house. The shadows of night had gathered so 
fast, that he did not look about him when he closed 
the door, but plodded straight along the street. Noth- 
I ing was further from his thoughts than the curious old woman 
j he had encountered on his [)revious visit to the same house, 

I when he heard a step behind him that he knew, and, turning, 
saw her in Rachael’s company. 

He saw Rachael first, as he had heard her only. 

“ Ah Rachael, my dear ! Missus, thou we’ her ! ” 

“Well, and now you are surprised to be sure, and with rea- 
son I must say,” the old woman returned. “ Here I am again, 
you see.” 

“ But how wi’ Rachael ? ” said Stephen, falling into their 



I 


HARD TIMES. 


136 

step, walking between them, and looking from the one to the 
Other. 

“ Why, I come to be with this good lass pretty much as I 
came to be with you,” said the old woman cheerfully, taking 
the reply upon herself. “ My visiting time is later this year 
than usual, for I have been rather troubled with shortness of 
breath, and so put it off till the weather was fine and warm. 
For the same reason I don’t make all my journey in one day, 
but divide it into two days, and get a bed to-night at the Travel- 
lers’ Coffee House down by the railroad (a nice clean house), . 
and go back Parliamentary, at six in the morning. Well, but 
what has this to do with this good lass, says you ? I’m going 
to tell you. I have heard of Mr. Bounderby being married., I 
read it in the paper, where it looked grand — oh, it looked fine ! ” 
the old woman dwelt on it with a strange enthusiasm : “ and I 
want to see his wife. I have never seen her yet. Now, if you’ll 
believe me, she hasn’t come out of that house since noon to-day. 
So not to give her up too easily, I was waiting about, a little 
last bit more, when I passed close to this good lass two or three 
times ; and her face being so friendly I spoke to her, and she 
spoke to me. There ! ” said the old woman to Stephen, “you, 
can make all the rest out for yourself now, a deal shorter than 
I can, I dare say ! ” 

Once again, Stephen had to conquer an instinctive propen- 
sity to dislike this old woman, though her manner was as honest 
and simple as a manner possibly could be. With a gentleness 
that was natural to him as he knew it to be to Rachael, he pur- 
sued the subject that interested her in her old age. 

“Well, missus,” said he, “I ha seen the lady, and she were 
yoong and hansom. Wi’ fine dark thinkin eyes, and a still way, 
Rachael, as 1 ha never seen the like on.” 

“Young and handsome. Yes ! ” cried the old woman, quite 
delighted. “As bonny as a rose ! And what a happy wife ! ” i 
“ Aye, missus, I suppose she be,” said Stephen. But with a' I 
doubtful glance at Rachael. j 

“ Suppose she be ? She must be. She’s your master’s wife,” j 
returned the old woman. i 

Stephen nodded assent. “Though as to master,” said he, j 
glancing again at Rachael, “ not master onny more. That’s aw | 
enden twixt him and me.” : 

“ Have you left his work, Stephen ? ” asked Rachael, anx- | 
ioiisly and quickly. j 

“ Why Rachael,” he replied, “ whether I ha lefn his work or 1 
whether his work ha lef’n me, cooms t’ th’ same. His work 


HARD TIMES. 


137 


^ me are parted. ’Tis as weel so — better, I were thinken 
wnen yo coom up wi’ me. It would habrought’n trouble upon 
trouble if I had stayed theer. Haply ’tis a kindness to monny 
that I go; haply ’tis a kindness to mysein ; anyways it mun be 
done. I mun turn my face fro Coketown fur th’ time, and seek 
a fort’n, dear, by beginnin fresh.” 

“ Where will you go, Stephen ? ” 

“ I donno t’night,” said he, lifting off his hat, and smoothing 
his thin hair with the flat of his hand. “ But I’m not goin 
t’night, Rachael, nor yet t’morrow. Tan’t easy overmuch, 
t’know weer ’t turn, but a good heart will coom to me.” 

Herein, too, the sense of even thinking unselfishly aided him. 
Before he had so much as closed Mr. Bounderby’s door, he had 
reflected that at least his being obliged to go away was good for 
her, as it would save her from the chance of being brought into 
question for not withdrawing from him. Though it would cost 
him a hard pang to leave her, and though he could think of no 
similar place in which his condemnation would i;ot pursue him, 
perhaps it was almost a relief to be forced away from the endur- 
ance of the last four days, even to unknown difficulties and 
distresses. 

So he said, with truth, “ I’m more leetsome, Rachael, under ’t 
than I could’ n ha believed.” It was not her part to make his 
burden heavier. She answered with her comforting smile, and 
the three walked on together. 

Age, especially when it strives to be self-reliant and cheerful, 
finds much consideration among the poor. The woman was so 
decent and contented, and made so light of her infirmities, though 
they had increased upon her since her former interview with 
Stephen, that they both took an interest in her. She was too 
sprightly to allow of their walking at a slow pace on her account, 
but she was very grateful to be talked to, and very willing to talk 
to any extent : so, when they came to their part of the town, 
she was more brisk and vivacious than ever. 

“ Coom to my poor place, missus,” said Stephen, “ and tak 
a coop o’ tea. Rachael will coom then ; and arterwards I’ll see 
thee safe t’ thy Travellers’ lodgin. ’T may be long, Rachael, 
ere ever I ha th’ chance o’ thy company agin.” 

They complied, and the three went on to the house where he 
lodged. When they turned into a narrow street, Stephen 
glanced at his window with a dread that always haunted his 
desolate home ; but it was open, as he had left it, and no one 
was there. The evil spirit of his life had flitted away again, 
months ago, and he had heard no more of her since. The only 


138 


HARD TIMES. 


evidences of her last return now, were the scantier moveables in 
his room, and the grayer hair upon his head. 

He lighted a candle, set out his little tea-board, got hot water 
from below, and brought in small portions of tea and sugar, a 
loaf, and some butter, from the nearest shop. The bread was 
new and crusty, the butter fresh, and the sugar lump, of course 
— in fulfilment of the standard testimony of the Coketown mag- 
nates, that these people lived like princes, sir. Rachael made 
the tea (so large a party necessitated the borrowing of a cup), 
and the visitor enjoyed it mightily. It was the first glimpse of 
sociality the host had had for many days. He too, with the 
world a wide heath before him, enjoyed the meal — again in cor- 
roboration of the magnates, as exemplifying the utter want of 
calculation on the part of these people, sir. 

“ I ha never thowt yet, missus,” said Stephen, “ o’ askin thy 
name.” 

The old lady announced herself as “ Mrs. Pegler.” 

“ A widder, I think ? ” said Stephen. 

“ Oh, many years ! ” Mrs. Pegler’s husband (one of the best 
on record) was already dead, by Mrs. Pegler’s calculation, when 
Stephen was born. 

“ ’Twere a bad job too, to lose so good a one,” said Stephen. 

Onny children ? ” 

Mrs. Pegler’s cup, rattling against her saucer as she held it, 
denoted some nervousness on her part. “ No,” she said. “ Not 
now, not now.” 

“ Dead, Stephen,” Rachael softly hinted. 

“I’m sooary I ha’ spok’n on ’t,” said Stephen, “I ought t’ 
hadn in my mind as I might touch a sore place. I — I blame 
myseln.” 

While he excused himself, the old lady’s cup rattled more and 
more. “ I had a son,” she said, curiously distressed, and not 
by any of the usual appearances of sorrow ; “and he did well, 
wonderfully well. But he is not to be spoken of if you please. 
He is — ” Putting down her cup, she moved her hands as if 
she would have added, by her action’ “dead ! ” Then she said, 
aloud, “ I have lost him.” 

Stephen had not yet got the better of his having given the old 
lady pain, when his landlady came stumbling up the narrow 
stairs, and calling him to the door, whispered in his ear. Mrs. 
Pegler was by no means deaf, for she caught a word as it was 
uttered. 

“ Bounderby ! ” she cried, in a suppressed voice, starting up 
from the table. “ Oh hide me ! Don’t let me be seen for the 


HARD TIMES. 


139 


world. Don’t let him come up till I’ve got away. Pray, pray ! ” 
She trembled, and was excessively agitated ; getting behind 
Rachael, when Rachael tried to reassure her ; and not seeming 
to know what she was about. 

“ But hearken, missus, hearken ; ” said Stephen, astonished, 
“’Tisn’t Mr. Bounderby ; ’tis his wife. Yor not fearfo’ o’ her. 
Yo was hey-go-mad about her; but an hour sin.” 

“ But are you sure it’s the lady, and not the gentleman ? ” 
she asked, still trembling. 

“ Certain sure ! ” 

“ Well then, pray don’t speak to me, nor yet take any notice 
of me,” said the old woman. “ Let me be quite to myself in 
this corner.” 

Stephen nodded ; looking to Rachael for an explanation, 
which she was quite unable to give him ; took the candle, went 
down stairs, and in a few moments returned, lighting Louisa 
into the room. She was followed by the whelp. 

Rachael had risen, and stood apart with her shawl and bonnet 
in her hand, when Stephen, himself profoundly astonished by 
this visit, put the candle on the table. Then he too stood, 
with his doubled hand upon the table near it, waiting to be 
addressed. 

For the first time in her life, Louisa had come into one of 
the dwellings of Coketown hands ; for the first time in her life, 
she was face to face with anything like individuality in connec- 
tion with them. She knew of their existence by hundreds and 
by thousands. She knew w^hat results in work a given number 
of them would produce, in a given space of time. She knew 
them in crowds passing to and from their nests, like ants or 
beetles. But she knew from her reading infinitely more of the 
ways of toiling insects than of these toiling men and women. 

Something to be worked so much and paid so much, and 
there ended ; something to be infallibly settled by laws of sup- 
ply and demand ; something that blundered against those laws, 
and floundered into difficulty ; something that was a little 
pinched when wheat was dear, and over ate itself when wheat 
was cheap ; something that increased at such a rate of percent- 
age, and yielded such another percentage of crime, and such 
another percentage of pauperism ; something wholesale, of 
which vast fortunes were made ; something that occasionally 
rose like a sea, and did some harm and waste (chiefly to itself), 
and fell again ; this she knew the Coketown Hands to be. But, 
she had scarcely thought more of separating them into units, 
than of separating the sea itself into component drops. 


140 


HARD TIMES. 


She stood for some moments looking round the room. From 
the few chairs, the few books, the common prints, and the bed, 
she glanced to the two women, and to Stephen. 

“ I have come to speak to you, in consequence of what 
passed just now. I should like to be serviceable to you, if you 
will let me. Is this your wife ? ” 

Rachael raised her eyes, and they sufficiently answered no, 
and dropped again. 

“ I remember,” said Louisa, reddening at her mistake ; “ I 
recollect, now, to have heard your domestic misfortunes spoken 
of, though I was not attending to the ])articulars at the time. 
It was not my meaning to ask a question that would give pain 
to any one here. If I should ask any other question that may 
happen to have tliat result, give me credit, if you please, for 
* being in ignorance how to speak to you as I ought.” 

As Stephen had but a little while ago instinctively addressed 
himself to her, so she now instinctively addressed herself to 
Rachael. Her manner was short and abrupt, yet faltering and 
timid. 

“ He has told you what has passed between himself and my 
husband ? You would be his first resource, I think.” 

“ I have heard the end of it, young lady,” said Rachael. 

“ Did I understand, that, being rejected by one employer, 
he would probably be rejected by all ? I thought he said as 
much ? ” 

“The chances are very small, young lady — next to nothing — 
for a man who gets a bad name among them.” 

“ What shall I understand that you mean by a bad name ? ” 

“The name of being troublesome.” 

‘iThen, by the prejudices of his own class, and by the preju- 
dices of the other, he is sacrificed alike ? Are the two so deeply 
se]>arated in this town, that there is no place whatever, for an 
honest workman between them ? ” 

Rachael shook her head in silence. 

“ He fell into suspicion,” said Louisa, “ with his fellow- 
weavers, because he had made a promise not to be one of them. 
I think it must have been to you that he made that promise. 
Might I ask you why he made it ? ” 

Rachael burst into tears. “ I didn’t seek it of him, poor lad. 
I prayed him to avoid trouble for his own good, little thinking 
he’d come to it through me. But* I know he’d die a hundred 
deaths, ere ever he’d break his word. I know that of him 
well.” 

Stephen had remained quietly attentive, in his usual thought- 


IIA/^D TIMES. 


141 

fill attitude, with his hand at his chin. He now spoke in a 
voice rather less steady than usual. 

“ No one, excepting inyseln, can ever know what honor, an 
what love, an respect, I bear to Rachael, or wi’ what cause. 
When I passed that proiness, I towd her true, she were th’ 
Angel o’ my life. ’Twere a solemn promess. ’Tis gone fro’ 
me, for ever.” 

Louisa turned her head to him, and bent it with a deference 
that was new in her. She looked from him to Rachael, and 
her features softened. “ What will you do ? ” she asked him. 
And her voice had softened too. 

“ Weel, ma’am,” said Stephen, making the best of it, with a 
smile; “when I ha finished off, I mun quit this part, and try 
another. Fortnet or misfortnet, a man can but try ; there’s 
nowt to be done wi’out tryin’ — cept laying down and dying.” 

“ How will you travel ? ” 

“ Afoot, my kind ledy, afoot.” 

Louisa colored, and a purse appeared in her hand. The 
rustling of a bank-note was audible, as she unfolded one and 
laid it on the table. 

“ Rachael, will you tell him — for you know how, without 
offence — that this is freely his, to help him on his way ? Will 
you entreat him to take it ? ” 

“ I canna do that, young lady,” she answered, turning her 
head aside. “ Bless you for thinking o’ the poor lad wi’ such 
tenderness. But ’tis for him to know his heart, and what is 
right according to it.’ 

Louisa looked, in part incredulous, in part frightened, in 
part overcome with quick sympathy, when this man of so much 
self-command, who had been so plain and steady through the 
late interview, lost his composure in a moment, and now stood 
with his hand before his face. She stretched out hers, as if she 
would have touched him ; then checked herself and remained 
still. 

“ Not e’en Rachael,” said Stephen, when he stood again with 
his face uncovered, “could mak sitch a kind offerin, by onny 
words, kinder. T’ show that I’m not a man wi’out reason and 
gratitude. I’ll tak two pound. I’ll borrow ’t for t’ pay ’t back. 
’Twill be the sweetest work as ever I ha done, that puts it in my 
power t’ acknowledge once more my lasting thankfulness for this 
present action.” 

She was fain to take up .the note again, and to substitute the 
much smaller sum he had named. He was neither courtly, nor 
handsome, nor picturesque, in any respect ; and yet his manner 


142 


HARD TIMES. 


of accepting it, and of expressing his thanks without more 
words, had a grace in it that Lord Chesterfield could not have 
taught his son in a century. 

Tom had sat upon the bed, swinging one leg, and sucking his 
walking-stick with sufficient unconcern, until the visit had at- 
tained this stage. Seeing his sister ready to depart, he got up, 
rather hurriedly, and put in a word. 

“Just wait a moment. Loo ! Before we go, I should like to 
speak to him a moment. Something comes into my head. If 
you’ll step out on the stairs, Blackpool, I’ll mention it. Never 
mind a light, man ! ” Tom was remarkably impatient of his 
moving towards the cupboard, to get one. “ It don’t want a 
light.” 

Stephen followed him out, and Tom closed the room door, 
and held the lock in his hand. 

“ I say ! ” he whispered. “ I think I can do you a good 
turn. Don’t ask me what it is, because it may not come to 
anything. But there’s no harm in my trying.” 

His breath fell like a flame of fire on Stephen’s ear, it was so 
hot. 

“ That was our light porter at the Bank,” said Tom, “ who 
brought you the message to-night. I call him our light porter, 
because I belong to the Bank too.” 

Stephen thought, “ What a hurry he is in ! ” He spoke so 
confusedly. 

“Well!” said Tom. “Now look here! When are you 
off?” 

“T’ day’s Monday,” replied Stephen, considering. “Why, 
sir, Friday or Saturday, nigh ’bout.” 

“Friday or Saturday,” said Tom. “Now, look here ! I am 
not sure that I can do you the good turn I want to do you — 
that’s my sister, you know, in your room — but I may be able 
to, and if I should not be able to, there’s no harm done. So I 
tell you what. You’ll know our light porter again ?” 

“ Yes, sure,” said Stephen. 

“Very well,” returned Tom. “When you leave work of a 
night, between this and your going away, just hang about the 
Bank an hour or so, will you ? Don’t take on, as if you meant 
anything, if he should see you hanging about there ; because I 
shan’t put him up to speak to you, unless I find I can do you 
the service I want to do you. In that case he’ll have a note or 
a message for you, but not else. Now look here ! You are 
sure you understand.” 

He had wormed a finger, in the darkness, through a button- 


JIA/^D TIMES, 


143 


hole of Stephen’s coat, and was screwing that corner of the 
garment tight up, round and round, in an extraordinary man- 
ner. 

“ I understand, sir,” said Stephen. 

“ Now look here,” repeated Tom. “ Be sure you don’t make 
any mistake then, and don’t forget. I shall tell my sister as we 
go home, what I have in view, and she’ll approve, I know. Now 
look here! You’re all right, are you? You understand all 
about it ? Very well then. Come along. Loo I ” 

He pushed the door open as he called to her, but did not re- 
turn into the room, or wait to be lighted down the narrow stairs. 
He was at the bottom when she began to descend, and was in 
the street before she could take his arm. 

Mrs. Pegler remained in her corner until the brother and sis- 
ter were gone, and until Stephen came back with the candle in 
his hand. She was in a state of inexpressible admiration of 
Mrs. Bounderby, and, like an unaccountable old woman, wept, 
“ because she was such a pretty dear.” Yet Mrs. Pegler was 
so flurried lest the object of her admiration should return by 
chance, or anybody else should come, that her cheerfulness was 
ended for that night. It was late too, to people who rose early 
and worked hard ; therefore the party broke up ; and Stephen 
and Rachael escorted their mysterious acquaintance to the door 
of the Traveller’s Coffee House, where they parted from her. 

They walked back together to the corner of the street where 
Rachael lived, and as they drew nearer and nearer to it, silence 
crept upon them. When they came to the dark corner where 
their unfrequent meetings always ended, they stopped, still 
silent, as if both were afraid to speak. 

“ I shall strive t’ see thee agen, Rachael, afore I go, but if 
not—” 

“Thou wilt not, Stephen, I know. ’Tis better that we make 
up our minds to be open wi’ one another.” 

“ Thou’rt awlus right. ’Tis bolder and better. I ha been 
thinkin then, Rachael, that as ’tis but a day or two that remains 
’twere better for thee, my dear, not t’ be seen wi’ me. ’T 
might bring thee into trouble, fur no good.” 

“ ’Tis not for that, Stephen, that I mind. But thou know’st 
our old agreement. ’Tis for that.” 

“ Well, well,” said he. “ ’Tis better onnyways.” 

“ Thou’ It write to me, and tell me all that happens, Steph- 
en ? ” 

“Yes. What can I say now, but Heaven be wi’ thee. Heav- 
en bless thee, Heaven thank thee and reward thee ! ” 


144 


HARD TIMES. 


“ May it bless thee, Stephen, too, in all thy wanderings, and 
send thee peace and rest at last ! ” 

“ I towd thee, my dear,” said Stephen Blackpool — “ that 
night — that I would never see or think o’ onnything that an- 
gered me, but thou, so much better than me, should’ st be beside 
it. Thou’rt beside it now. Thou mak’st me see it wi’ a better 
eye. Bless thee. Good night. Good-bye ! ” 

It was but a hurried parting in a common street, yet it was a 
sacred remembrance to tl>ese two common people. Utilitarian 
economists, skeletons of schoolmasters, Commissioners of P'act, 
genteel and used-up infidels, gabblers of many little dog’s-eared 
creeds, the poor you will have always with you. Cultivate in 
them, while there is yet time, the utmost graces of the fancies 
and affections, to adorn theiiTives so much in need of ornament ; 
or, in the day of your triumph, when romance is utterly driven 
out of their souls, and they and a bare existence stand face to 
face. Reality will take a wolfish turn, and make an end of you. 

Stephen worked the next day, and the next, uncheered by a 
word from any one, and shunned in all his comings and goings, 
as before. At the end of the second day, he saw land ; 'at the 
end of the third, his loom stood empty. 

He had overstayed his hour in the street outside the Bank, 
on each of the two first evenings ; and nothing had happened 
there, good or bad. That he might not be remiss in his part of 
the engagement, he resolved to wait full two hours, on this third 
and last night. 

There was the lady who had once kept Mr. Bounderby’s 
house, sitting at the first floor window as he had seen her before ; 
and there was the light porter, sometimes talking with her there, 
and sometimes looking over the blind below which had Bank 
upon it, and sometimes coming to the door and standing on the 
steps for a breath of air. When he first came out, Stephen 
thought he might be looking for him, and passed near ; but the 
light porter only cast his winking eyes upon him slightly, and 
said nothing. 

Two hours were a long stretch of lounging about, after a long 
day’s labour. Stephen sat upon the step of a door, leaned 
against a wall under an archway, strolled up and down, listened 
for the church clock, stopped and watched children playing in 
the street. Some purpose or other is so natural to every one, 
^that a mere loiterer always looks and feels remarkable. When 
the first hour was out, Stephen even began to have an uncom- 
fortable sensation upon him of being for the time a disreputa- 
ble character. 


//A7?D TIMES. 


145 


Then came the lamplighter, and two lengthening lines of light 
all down the long perspective of the street, until they were 
blended and lost in the distance. Mrs. Sparsit closed the first 
floor window, drew down the blind, and went up-stairs. Pres- 
ently, a light went iip-stairs after her, passing first the fanlight 
of the door, and afterwards the two staircase windows, on its 
way up. By and by, one corner of the second floor blind was 
disturbed, as if Mrs. Sparsit’s eye were there; also the other 
corner, as if the light porter’s eye were on that side. Still no 
communication was made to Stephen. Much relieved when 
the two hours were at last accomplished, he went away at a 
quick pace, as a recompense for so much loitering. 

He had only to take leave of his landlad}^, and lie down on 
his tempory bed upon the floor ; for his bundle was made up for 
to-morrow, and all was arranged for his departure. He meant 
to be clear of the town very early ; before the Hands were in 
the streets. 

It was barely daybreak, when, with a parting look round his 
room, mournfully wondering whether he should ever see it 
again, he went out. The town was as entirely deserted as if 
the inhabitants had abandoned it, rather than hold communica- 
tion with him. Everything looked wan at that hour. Even the 
coming sun made but a pale waste in the sky, like a sad sea. 

By the place where Rachael lived, though it was not in his 
way ; by the red brick streets ; by the great silent factories, 
not trembling yet ; by the railway, where the danger-lights were 
waning in the strengthening day ; by the railway’s crazy neigh- 
bourhood, half pulled down and half built up ; by scattered red 
brick villas, where the besmoked evergreens were sprinkled with 
a dirty powder, like untidy snuff-takers ; by coal-dust paths and 
many varieties of ugliness ; Stephen got to the top of the hill, 
and looked back. 

Day was shining radiantly upon the town then, and the bells 
were going for the morning work. Domestic fires were not yet 
lighted, and the high chimneys had the sky to themselves. 
Puffing out their poisonous volumes, they would not be long in 
hiding it; but, for half an hour, some of the many windows 
were golden, which showed the Coketown people a sun eternally 
in eclipse, through a medium of smoked glass. 

So strange to turn from the chimneys to the birds. So strange 
to have the road-dust on his feet instead of the coal-grit. So 
strange to have lived to his time of life, and yet to be begin- 
ning like a boy this summer morning ! With these musings in 
his mind, and his bundle under his arm, Stephen took his atten- 
7 ' 


146 


//A/^n TIMES, 


tive face along the high road. And the trees arched over him, 
whispering that he left a true and loving heart behind. 


CHAPTER VII. 

Gunpowder, 

R. JAMES HARTHOUSE, “ going in” for his adopted 
party, soon began to score. With the aid of a little 
more coaching for the political sages, a little more 
genteel listlessness for the general society, and a toler- 
able management of the assumed honesty in dishonesty, most 
effective and most patronized of the polite deadly sins, he 
speedily came to be considered of much promise. The not be- 
ing troubled with earnestness was a grand point in his favour, 
enabling him to take to the hard Fact fellows with as good a 
grace as if he had been born one of the tribe, and to throw all 
other tribes overboard, as conscious hypocrites. 

‘‘Whom none of us believe, my dear Mrs. Bounderby, and 
who do not believe themselves. The only difference between 
us and the professors of virtue or benevolence, or philanthopy 
— never mind the name — is, that we know it is all meaningless, 
and say so ; while they know it equally and will never say so.” 

Why should she be shocked or warned by this reiteration ? 
It was not so unlike her father’s principles, and her early training, 
that it need startle her. Where was the great difference be- 
tween the two schools, when each chained her down to mate- 
rial realities, and inspired her with no faith in anything else ? 
What was there in her soul for James Harthouse to destroy, 
which Thomas Gradgrind had nurtured there in iti state of in- 
nocence ! 

It was even the worse for her at this pass, that in her mind 
— implanted there before her eminently practical father began 
to form it — a struggling disposition to believe in a wider and 
nobler humanity than she had ever heard of, constantly strove 
with doubts and resentments. With doubts, because the aspir- 
ation had been so laid waste in her youth. With resentments, 
because of the wrong that had been done her, if it were indeed 
a whisper of the truth. Upon a nature long accustomed to self- 
suppression, thus torn and divided, the Harthouse philosophy 
came as a relief and justification. Everything being hollow 



HARD TIMES. 


147 


and worthless, she had missed nothing and sacrificed nothing. 
What did it matter, she had said to her father, when he proposed 
her husband. What did it matter, she said still. With a scorn- 
ful self-reliance, she asked herself. What did anything matter — 
and went on. 

Towards what? Step by step, onward and downward, to- 
wards some end, yet so gradually, that she believed herself 
to remain motionless. As to Mr. Harthouse, whither tended 
he neither considered nor cared. He had no particular, 
design or plan before him : no energetic wickedness ruffled 
his lassitude. He was as much amused and interested at present, 
as it became so fine a gentleman to be ; perhaps even more 
than it would have been consistent with his reputation to con- 
fess. Soon after his arrival he languidly wrote to his brother, 
the honurable and jocular member, that the Bounderbys were 
“great fun; ’’and further, that the female Bounderby, instead 
of being the Gorgon he expected, was young, and remarkably 
pretty. After that, he wrote no more about them, and devoted 
his leisure chiefly to their house. He was very often in their 
house, in his flittings and visitings about the Coketown district ; 
and was much encouraged by Mr. Bounderby. It was quite in 
Mr. Bounderby’ s gusty way to boast to all his world that ke 
didn’t care about your highly connected people, but that if his 
wife, Tom Gradgrind’s daughter, did, she was welcome to their 
company. 

Mr. James Harthouse began to think it would be a new sen- 
sation, if the face which changed so beautifully for the whelp, 
would change for him. 

He was quick enough to observe ; he had a good memory, 
and did not forget a word of the brother’s revelations. He in- 
terwove them with everything he saw of the sister, and he be- 
gan to understand her. To be sure, the better and profounder 
part of her character was not within his scope of perception ; 
for in natures, as in seas, depth answers unto depth; but he 
soon began to read the rest with a student’s eye. 

Mr. Bounderby had taken possession of a house and grounds, 
about fifteen miles from the town, and accessible within a mile 
or two, by a railway striding on. many arches over a wild coun- 
try, undermined by deserted coal-shafts, and spotted at night 
by fires and black shapes of stationary engines at pits’ mouths. 
This country, gradually softening towards the neighbourhood 
of Mr. Bounderby’s retreat, there mellowed into a rustic land- 
scape, golden with heath, and snowy with hawthorn in the 
spring of the year, and tremulous with leaves and their shad- 


143 


I/AJ^D TIMES. 


clows all the summer- time. The bank liacl foreclosed a mort- 
gage effected on the ])roperty thus pleasantly situated, by one 
of the Coketown magnates, who, in his determination to make 
a shorter cut than usual to an enormous fortune, overspecu- 
lated himself by about two hundred thousand pounds. These 
accidents did sometimes happen in the best-regulated families 
of Coketown, but the bankrupts had no connexion whatever 
with the improvident classes. 

• It afforded Mr. Bounderby supreme satisfaction to instal him- 
self in this snug little estate, and with demonstrative humility 
to grow cabbages in the flower-garden. He delighted to live, 
barrack-fashion, among the elegant furniture, and he bullied 
the very pictures with his orgin. “ Why, sir,” he would say to 
a visitor, “I am told that Nickits,” the late owner, “gave 
seven hundred pound for that Sea-beach. Now to be plain 
with you, if I ever, in the whole couse of my life, take seven 
looks at it, at a hundred pound a look, it will be as much as 
I shall do. No, by George ! I don’t forget that I am Josiah 
Bounderby of Coketown. For years upon years, the only pic- 
tures in my possession, or that I could have got into my pos- 
session by any means, unless I stole ’em, were the engravings 
of a man shaving himself in a boot, on the blacking bottles that 
I was overjoyed to use-in cleaning boots with, and that I sold 
when they were empty for a farthing apiece, and glad to get 
it!” 

Then he would address Mr. Harthouse in the same style. 

“ Harthouse, you have a couple of horses down here. 
Bring half a dozen more if you like, and we’ll find room for ’em. 
There’s stabling in this place for a dozen horses; and unless 
Nickits is belied, he kept the full number. A round dozen 
of ’em, sir. When that man was a boy, he went to Westmin- 
ster School. Went to Westminster School as a King’s Scholar, 
when I was principally living on garbage, and sleeping in mar- 
ket baskets. Why, if I wanted to keep a dozen horses — which 
I don’t, for one’s enough for me — I couldn’t bear to see ’em in 
their stalls here, and think what my own lodging used to be. 
I couldn’t look at ’em, sir, and not order ’em out. Yet so 
things come round. You see this place ; you know what sort 
of a place it is ; you are aware that there’s not a completer 
place of its size in this kingdom or elsewhere — I don’t care 
where — and here, got into the middle of it, like a maggot into a 
nut, is Josiah Bounderby. While Nickits (as a man came into 
my office, and told me yesterday), Nickits, who used to act in 
Latin, in Westminster School plays, with the chief-justices and 


TIMES, 


149 


nobility of this country applauding him till they were black in 
the face, is drivelling at this minute — drivelling, sir ! — in a 
fifth floor up a narrow dark back street in Antwerp.” 

It was among the leafy shadows of this retirement, in the long 
sultry summer days, that Mr. Harthouse began to prove the 
face which had set him wondering when he first saw it, and to 
try if it would change for him. 

“ Mrs. Bounderby, I esteem it a most fortunate accident that 
I find you alone here. 1 have for some time had a particular 
wish to speak to you.” 

It was not by any wonderful accident that he found her, the 
time of day being that at which she was always alone, and the 
place being her favorite resort. It was an opening in a dark 
wood, where some felled trees lay, and where she would sit 
watching the fallen leaves of last year, as she had watched the 
falling ashes at home. 

He sat down beside her, with a glance at her face. 

“ Your brother. My young friend Tom — " 

Her color brightened, and she turned to him with a look of 
interest. “ I never in my life,” he thought, “ saw anything so 
remarkable and so captivating as the lighting of those features ! ” 
H is face betrayed his thoughts — perhaps without betraying him, 
for it might have been according to its wistructions so to do. 

“ Pardon me. The expression of your sisterly interest is so 
beautiful — Tom should be so proud of it — I know this is inex- 
cusable, but I am so compelled to admire.” 

“ Being so impulsive,” she said com]josedly. 

“Mrs. Bounderby, no : you know I make no pretence with 
you. You know I am a sordid piece of human nature, ready 
to sell myself at any time for any reasonable sum, and alto- 
gether incapable of any Arcadian proceeding whatever.” 

“ I am waiting,” she returned, “ for your further reference to 
my brother.” 

“ You are rigid with me, and I deserve it. I am as worth- 
less a dog as you will find, except that I am not false — not 
false. But you surprised and started me from my subject, which 
was your brother. I have an interest in him.” 

“Have you an interest in anything, Mr. Harthouse?” she 
asked, half incredulously and half gratefully. 

“ If you had asked me when I first came here, I should have 
said no. I must say now — even at the hazard of appearing to 
make a pretence, and of justly awakening your incredulity — 
yes.” 

- She made a slight movement, as if she were trying to speak, 


//A/^D TIMES. 


*150 

,biit could not find voice ; at length she said, Mr, Harthoiise, 
I give you credit for being interested in my brother.” 

“ Thank you. I claim to deserve it. You know how little 
I do claim, but I will go that length. You have done so much 
for him, you are so fond of him ; your whole life, Mrs Bound- 
efiby, expresses such charming self-forgetfulness on his account 
— pardon me again — I am running wide of the subject. I am 
interested in him for his own sake.’’ 

She had made the slightest action possible, as if she would 
have risen in a hurry and gone away. He had turned the course 
of what he said at that instant, and she remained. 

“Mrs. Bounderby,” he resumed, in a lighter manner, yet 
with a show of effort in assuming it, which was even more 
expressive than the manner he dismissed ; “ it is no irrevocable 
offence in a young fellow of your brother’s years, if he is heed- 
less, inconsiderate, and expensive — a little dissipated, in the 
common phrase. Is he ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“Allow me to be frank. Do you think he games at all?” 
I think he makes bets.” Mr. Harthouse waiting as if that 
were not her whole answer, she added, “ I know he does.” 

“ Of course he loses ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Everybody does lose who bets. . May I hint at the prob- 
ability of your sometimes supplying him with money for these 
purposes ? ” 

She sat, looking down ; but, at this question, raised her eyes 
searchingly and a little resentfully. 

“ Acquit me of impertinent curiosity, my dear Mrs. Bound- 
erby. I think Tom may be gradually falling into trouble, and 
I wish to stretch out a helping hand to him from the depths of 
my wicked experience. — Shall I say again, for his sake ? Is 
- that necessary ? ” 

She seemed to try to answer, but nothing came of it. 

“ Candidly to confess everything that has occurred to me,” 
said James Harthouse, again gliding with the same appearance 
of effort into his more airy manner ; “I will confide to you my 
doubt whether he has had many advantages. Whether — for- 
give my plainness — whether any great amount of confidence is 
likely to have been established between himself and his most 
worthy father.” 

“ I do not,” said Louisa, flushing with her own great remem- 
brance in that wise, “think it likely.” 

“Or, between himself, and— I may trust to your perfect un- 


I^ARD TIMES. 


,151 

derstanding of my meaning, I am sure — and his highly esteemed 
brother-in-law.” 

She flushed deeper and deeper, and was burning red when 
she replied in a fainter voice, “I do not think that likely 
either.” 

“ Mrs. Boumderby,” said Harthouse, after a short silence, 
“ may there be a better confidence between yourself and me ? 
Tom has borrowed a considerable sum of you?” 

“You will understand, Mr. Harthouse,” she returned, after 
some indecision : she had been more or less uncertain, and 
troubled throughout the conversation, and yet had in the main 
preserved her self contained manner ; “ you will understand that 
if I tell you what you press to know, it is not by way of complaint 
or regret. I would never complain of anything, and what I have 
done 1 do not in the least regret.” 

“ So spirited too ! ” thought James Harthouse. 

“ When I married, I found that my brother was even at that 
time heavily in debt. Heavily for him, I mean. Heavily enough 
to oblige me to sell some trinkets. They were no sacrifice. I 
sold them very willingly. I attached no value to them. They 
were quite worthless to me.” 

Either she saw in his face that he knew, or she only feared 
in her conscience that he knew, that she spoke of some of her 
husband’s gifts. She stopped, and reddened again. If he had 
not known it before, he would have known it then, though he 
had been a much duller man than he was. 

“Sincd then, I have given my brother, at various times, 
what money I could spare : in short, what money 1 have had. 
Confiding in you at all, on the faith of the interest you profess 
for him, 1 will not do so by halves. Since you have been in 
the habit of visiting here, he has wanted in one sum as much as 
a hundred pounds. I have not been able to give it to him. I 
have felt uneasy for the consequences of his being so involved, 
but I have kept these secrets until now, when I trust them to 
your honour. 1 have held no confidence with any one, because 
— you anticipated my reason just now.” She abruptly broke 
off. 

He was a ready man, and he saw, and seized, an opportunity 
here of presenting her own image to her, slightly disguised as 
her brother. 

“ Mrs. Bounderby, though a graceless person, of the world 
worldly, I feel the utmost interest, I assure you, in what you 
tell me. I cannot possibly be hard upon your brother. I un- 
derstand and share the wise consideration with which you regard 


152 


TIMES. 


his errors. With all possible respect both for Mr. Gradgrind 
and for Mr. Boundcrby, I think I perceive that he has not 
been fortunate in his training. Bred at a disadvantage towards 
the society in which he has his part to play, he rushes into these 
extremes for himself, from opposite extremes that have long 
been forced — with the very best intentions we have no doubt — 
upon him. Mr. Bounderby’s fine bluff English independence, 
though a most charming characteristic, does not — as we have 
agreed — invite confidence. If I might venture to remark that 
it is the least in the world deficient in that delicacy to which a 
youth mistaken, a character misconceived, and abilities mis- 
directed, would turn for relief and guidance, 1 should express 
what it presents to my own view.” 

As she sat looking straight before her, across the changing 
lights upon the grass into the darkness of the wood beyond, he 
saw in her face her application of his very distinctly uttered 
words. 

“All allowance,” he continued, “must be made. I have 
one great fault to find with Tom, however, which I cannot for- 
give, and for which I take him heavily to account.” 

Louisa turned her eyes to his face, and asked him what fault 
was that ? * 

• “ Perhaps,” he returned, “ I have said enough. Perhaj)s it 
would have been better, on the whole, if no allusion to it had 
escaped me.” 

“You alarm me, Mr. Harthouse. Pray let me know it.” 

“ To relieve you from needless apprehension — and as this 
confidence regarding your brother, which I prize I am sure above 
all possible things, has been established between us — I obey. 
I cannot forgive him for not being more sensible in every word, 
look, and act of his life, of the affection of his best friend : of 
the devotion of his best friend ; of her unselfishness ; of her 
sacrifice. The return he makes her, within my observation, is 
a very poor one. What she has done for him demands his 
constant love and gratitude, not his ill-humour and caprice. 
Careless fellow as I am, 1 am not so indifferent, Mrs. Bound- 
erby, as to be regardless of this vice ih your brother, or in- 
clined to consider it a venial offence.” 

The wood floated before her, for her eyes were suffused with 
tears. They rose from a deep well, long concealed, and her 
heart was filled with acute pain that found no relief in them. 

“In a word, it is to correct your brother in this, Mrs. Bound- 
erby, that I must aspire. My better knowledge of his circum- 
stances, and my direction and advice in extricating him — rather 




Mr. Harthouse and Mr. Bounderby in the Garden. — [Page 153 ] 



HARD TIMES. 


153 


valuable, I hope, as coming from a scrapegrace on a much 
larger scale — will give me some influence over him, and all 1 
gain I shall certainly use towards this end. I have said enough, 
and more than enough. I seem to be protesting that I am a sort 
of good fellow, when, upon my honour, I have not the least 
intention to make any protestation to that effect, and openly 
announce that I am nothing of the sort. Yonder, among the 
trees,” he added, having lifted up his eyes and looked about ; 
for he had watched her closely until now ; “ is your brother him- 
self ; no doubt, just come down. As he seems to be loitering 
in this direction, it may be as well, perhaps, to walk towards 
him, and throw ourselves in his way. He has been very silent 
and doleful of late. Perhaps his brotherly concience is touched 
— if there are such things as consciences. Though, upon my 
honour, 1 hear of them much too often to believe in them.” 

He assisted her to rise, and she took his arm, and they ad- 
vanced to meet the whelp. He was idly beating the branches 
as he lounged along : or he stooped viciously to rip the moss 
from the trees with his stick. He was startled when they came 
upon him while he was engaged in this latter pastime, and his 
colour changed. 

“ Halloa ! ” he stammered ; “ I didn’t know you were here.” 

“ Whose name, Tom,” said Mr. Harthouse, putting his hand 
upon his shoulder and turning him, so that they all three walked 
towards the house together, have you been carving on the 
trees ? ” 

“ Whose name ? ” returned Tom. “ Oh ! You mean what 
girl’s name ? ” 

“ You have a suspicious appearance of inscribing some fair 
creature’s on the bark, Tom.” 

“ Not much of that, Mr. Harthouse, unless some fair crea- 
ture with a slashing fortune at her own disposal \vould take a 
fancy to me. Or she might be as ugly as she was rich, without 
any fear of losing me. I’d carve her name as often as she 
liked.” 

“ I am afraid you are mercenary, Tom.” 

“ Mercenary,” repeated Tom. “ Who is not mercenary ? 
Ask my sister.” 

“Have you so proved it to be a failing of mine, Tom?” 
said Louisa, showing no other sense of his discontent and ill- 
nature. 

“You know whether the cap fits you, l.oo,” returned her 
brother sulkily. “ If it does, you can wear it.” 

“Tom is misanthropical to day, as all bored people are now 


/:fAA^D TIMES. 


and then,” said Mr. Hartbouse. “Don’t believe him, Mrs. 
Bounderby. He knows much better. I shall disclose 3ome of 
his opinions of you, privately expressed to me, unless he relents 
a little.” 

“ At all events, Mr. Harthquse,” said Tom, softening in his 
admiration of his patron, but shaking his head sullenly too, 
“you can’t tell her that I ever praised her for being mercenary. 
I may have praised her for being the contrary, and I should do 
it again if I had as .good reason. However, never mind this 
now ; it’s not very interesting to you, and I am sick of the 
subject.” 

They walked on to the house, where Louisa quitted her visit- 
or’s arm and went in. He stood looking after her, as she as- 
cended the steps, and passed into the shadow of the door ; then 
put his hand upon her brother’s shoulder again, and invited him 
with a confidential nod to a walk in the garden. 

“Tom, my fine fellow, I want to have a word with you.” 

They had stopped among a disorder of roses — it was part of 
Mr. Bounderby’s humility to keep Nickits’s roses on a reduced 
scale — and Tom sat down on a terrace-parapet, plucking buds 
and picking them to pieces ; while his powerful Familiar stood 
over him, with a foot upon the parapet, and his figure easily 
resting on the arm supported by that knee. They were just 
visible from her window. Perhaps she saw them. 

“Tom, what’s the matter?” 

“ Oh ! Mr. Harthouse,” said Tom, with a groan, “ I am hard 
up, and bothered out of my life.” , 

“ My good fellow, so am I.” 

“You !” returned Tom. “You are the picture of independ- 
ence. Mr, Harthouse, I am in a horrible mess. You have 
no idea what a state I have got myself into — what a state my 
sister might have got me out of, if she would only have done 
it.” 

He took to biting the rosebuds now, and tearing them away 
from his teeth with a hand that trembled like an infirm old 
man’s. After one exceedingly observant look at him, his com- 
panion relapsed into his lightest air. 

“Tom, you are inconsiderate: you expect too much of your 
sister. You have had money of her, you dog, you know you 
have.” 

“ Well, Mr. Harthouse, I know I have. How else was I to 
get it? Here’s old Bounderby always boasting that at my age 
he lived ujwn two-pence a month, or something of that soil. 
Here’s my father drawing what he calls a line, and tying me 


NA/^D TIMES. 


155 


down to it from a baby, neck and heels. Here’s my mother 
who never has anything of her own, except her complaints. 
What is a fellow to do for monej^, and where I to look for 
it, if not to my sister ? ” 

He was almost crying, and scattered the buds about by doz- 
ens. Mr. Harthouse took him persuasively by the coat. 

“ But, my dear Tom, if your sister has not got it — ” 

“ Not got it, Mr. Harthouse ? I don’t say she has got it. 
I may have wanted more than she was likely to have got. But 
then she ought to get it. She could get it. It’s of no use pre- 
tending to make a secret of matters now, after what I have 
told you already; you know she didn’t marry old Bounderby 
for her own sake, or for his sake, but for my sake. Then why 
doesn’t she get what 1 want, out of him, for my sake? She is 
not obliged to say what she is going to do with it ; she is sharp 
enough ; she could manage to coax it out of him, if she chose. 
Then why doesn’t she choose, when I tell her of what conse- 
quence it is ? But no. There she sits in his company like a 
stone, instead of making herself agreeable and getting it easily. 
I don’t know what you may call this, but / call it unnatural 
conduct.” 

There was a piece of ornamental water immediately below 
the parapet, on the other side, into which Mr. James Harthouse 
had a very strong inclination to pitch Mr. Thomas Gradgrind 
Junior, as the injured men of Coketown threatened to pitch 
their property into the Atlantic. But he preserved his easy 
attitude ; and nothing more solid went over the stone balus- 
trades than the accumulated rosebuds now floating about, a 
little surface-island. 

“ My dear Tom,” said Harthouse, “let me try to be your 
banker.” 

“ For God’s sake,” replied Tom, suddenly, “don’t talk about 
bankers ! ” and very white he looked, in contrast with the roses. 
Very white. 

Mr. Harthouse, as a thoroughly well bred man, accustomed 
to the best society, was not to be surprised — he could as soon 
have been affected — but he raised his eyelids a little more, as 
if they were lifted by a feeble touch of wonder. Albeit it was 
as much against the precepts of his school to wonder, as it was 
against* the doctrines of the Gradgrind College. 

“ What is the present need, Tom ? Three figures ? Out 
with them. Say what they are.” 

“Mr. Harthouse,” returned Tom, now actually crying ; and 
his tears were better than his injuries, however pitiful a figure 
■ 7 * 


TIMES. 


156 

he made ; “ it’s too late ; the money is of no use to m*e at jn-es- 
ent. I should have had it before to be of use to me. But I 
am very much obliged to you ; you’re a true friend.” 

A true friend ! “ Whelp, whelp ! ” thought Mr. Harthouse, 

lazily ; “ what an Ass you are ! ” 

“ And I take your offer as a great kindness,” said Tom grasp- 
ing his hand. “As a great kindness, Mr. Harthouse.” 

“ Well,” returned the other, “it may be of more use by and 
by. And, my good fellow, if you will open your bedevilments 
to me when they come thick upon you, I may show you better 
ways out of them than you can find for yourself.” 

“Thank you,” said Tom, shaking Ins head dismally, and 
chewing rosebuds. “I wish I had known you sooner, Mr. 
Harthouse.” 

“Now, you see, Tom,” said Mr. Harthouse in conclusion, 
himself tossing over a rose or two, as a contribution to the isl- 
and, which was always drifting to the wall as if it wanted to 
become a part of the mainland : “every man is selfish in every- 
thing he does, and I am exactly like the rest of my fellow crea-_ 
tures. I am desperately intent ; ” the languor of his despera- 
tion being quite tropical ; “ on your softening towards your 
sister — which you ought to do ; and on your being a more lov- 
ing and agreeable sort of brother — which you ought to be.” 

“ I will be, Mr. Harthouse.” 

“ No time like the present, Tom. Begin at once.” 

“Certainly I will. And my sister Loo shall say so.” 

“Having made which bargain, Tom,” said Harthouse, clap- 
ping him on the shoulder again, with an air which left him at 
liberty to infer — as he did, poor fool — that this condition was 
imposed upon him In mere careless good nature to lessen his 
sense of obligation, “ we will tear ourselves asunder until din- 
ner-time.” 

When Tom appeared before dinner, though his mind seemed 
- heavy enough, his body was on the alert ; and he appeared be- 
fore Mr. Bounderby came in. “ I didn’t mean to be cross. 
Loo,” he said, giving her his hand, and kissing her. “ I know 
you are fond of me, and you know I am fond of you.” 

After this, there was a smile upon Louisa’s face that day, for 
some one else. Alas, for some one else ! 

“So much the less is the whelp the only creature that she 
cares for,” thought James Harthouse, reversing the reflection of 
his first day’s knowledge of her pretty face. “So much the 
less, so much the less.” 


J/AJ^D TIMES, 


157 


CHAPTER VIII. 

Explosion, 

HE next morning was too bright a morning for sleep, 
and James Harthouse rose early, and sat in the pleas- 
ant bay window of his dressing-room, smoking the 
rare tobacco that had had so wholesome an influence 
on his young friend. Reposing in the sunlight, with the fra- 
grance of his eastern pipe about him, and the dreamy smoke 
vanishing into the air, so rich and soft with summer odors, he 
reckoned up his advantages as an idle winner might count his 
gains. He was not at all bored for the time, and could give 
his mind to it. 

He had established a confidence with her, from which her 
husband was excluded. He had established a confidence with 
her, that absolutely turned upon her indifference towards her 
husband, and the absence, now and at all times, of any congen- 
iality between them. He had artfully, but plainly assured her, 
that he knew her heart in its most delicate recesses ; he had 
come so near to her through its tenderest sentiment ; he had 
associated himself with that feeling ; and the barrier behind 
which she lived, had melted away. All very odd, and very sat- 
isfactory ! 

And yet he had not even now, any earnest wickedness of 
purpose in him. Publicly and privately, it were much better 
for the age in which he lived, that he and the legion of whom 
he was one were designedly bad, than indirferent and purpose- 
less. It is the drifting icebergs setting with any current any- 
where, that Wreck the ships. 

When the Devil goeth about like a roaring lion, he goeth 
about in a shape by which few but savages and hunters are at- 
tracted. But, when he is trimmed, smoothed, and varnished, 
according to the mode : when he is aweary of vice, and aweary 
of virtue, used up as to brimsjtone, and used up as to bliss ; then, 
whether he take to the serving out of red tape, or to the kindling 
of red fire, he is the very Devil. 

So, James Harthouse reclined in the window, indolently 
smoking, and reckoning up the steps he had taken on the road 
by which he happened to be travelling. The end to which it led 
was before him, pretty plainly ; but he troubled himself with no 
calculations about it. What will be, will be. 



158 


HARD TIMES. 


As he had rather a long ride to take that day — for there was a 
public occasion “ to do ” at some distance, which afforded a toler- 
able opportunity of going in for the Gradgrind men — he dressed 
early, and went down to breakfast. He was anxious to see if she 
had relapsed since the previous evening. No. He resumed 
where he had left off. There was a look of interest for him 
again. 

He got through the day as much (or as little) to his own 
satisfaction, as was to be expected under the fatiguing circum- 
stances ; and came riding back at six o’clock. There was a 
sweep of some half mile between the lodge and the house, and 
he was riding along at a foot pace over the smooth gravel, once 
Nickits’s, when Mr. Bounderby burst out of the shrubbery, with 
such violence as to make his horse shy across the road. 

“ Harthouse , ” cried Mr. Bounderby. “ Have you heard ? ” 

“ Heard what ? ” said Harthouse, soothing his horse, and in- 
wardly favouring Mr. Bounderby with no good wishes. 

“ Then you haven't heard ! ” 

“ I have heard you, and so has this brute. I have heard 
nothing else. ” 

Mr. Bounderby, red and hot, planted himself in the centre of 
the path before the horse’s head, to explode his bombshell with 
more effect. 

“The Bank’s robbed ! ” 

“ You don’t mean it ! ” 

“ Robbed last night, sir. Robbed in an extraordinary manner. 
Robbed with a false key.” 

“ Of much ? ” 

Mr. Bounderby, in his desire to make the most of it, really 
seemed mortified by being obliged to reply, “ Why, no ; not of 
very much. But it might have been.” 

“ Of how much ? ” 

“ Oh ! as a sum — if you stick to. a sum — of not more than a 
hundred and fifty pound,” said Bounderby, with impatience. 
“ But it’s not the sum ; it’s the fact. It’s the fact of the Bank 
being robbed, that’s the important circumstance. 1 am sur- 
prised you don’t see it.” 

“ My dear Bounderby,” said James, dismounting, and giving 
his bridle to his servant, “ I do see it ; and am as overcome 
as you can possibly desire me to be, by the spectacle afforded to 
my mental view. Nevertheless, I may be allowed, I hope, to 
congratulate you — which 1 do with all my soul, I assure you — on 
your not having sustained a greater loss.” 

“ Thank’ee,” replied Bounderby, in a short, ungracious manner. 


//A/HD TIMES. 


159 

“ But I te]l you what. It might have been twenty thousand 
pound.” 

“ I suppose it might.” 

Suppose it might ! By the Lord, you may suppose so. By 
George !” said Mr. Bounderby, with sundry menacing nods and 
shakes of his head, “ It might have been twice twenty. There’s 
no knowing what it would have been, or wouldn’t have been, 
as it was, but for the fellows’ being disturbed.” 

Louisa had come up now, and Mrs. Sparsit, and Bitzer. 

“ Here’s Tom Gradgrind’s daughter knows pretty well what 
it might have been, if you don’t,” blustered Bounderby. 
“ Dropped, sir, as if she was shot when I told her ! Never 
knew her do such a thing before. Does her credit, under the 
circumstances, in ray opinion ! ” 

She still looked faint and pale. James Harthouse begged 
her to take his arm ; and as they moved on very slowly, asked 
her how the robbery had been committed. 

“ Why, I am going to tell you,” said Bounderby, irritably giv- 
ing his arm to Mrs. Sparsit. “ If you hadn’t been so mighty 
jjarticLilar about the sum, I should have begun to tell you before. 
Vou know this lady (for she is a lady), Mrs. Sparsit?” 

“ I have already had the honour — ” 

“ Very well. And this young man, Bitzer, you saw him too on 
the same occasion ? ” Mr. Harthouse inclined his head in 
assent, and Bitzer knuckled his forehead. 

“ Very well. They live at the Bank. You know they live at 
tlitj Bank, perhaps? Very well. Yesterday afternoon, at the 
close of business hours, everything was put away as usual. In 
the iron room that this young fellow sleeps outside of, there was 
never mind how much. In the little safe in young Tom’s closet, 
the safe used for i)etty purposes, there was a hundred and fifty 
odd pound.” 

“ A hundred and fifty-four, seven, one,” said Bitzer. 

“ Come ! ” retorted Bounderby, stopping»to wheel round upon 
him, “ let’s have none of7^'^/r interruptions. It’s enough to be 
robbed while you’re snoring because you’re too comfortable, 
without being put right with your four seven ones. I didn’t 
snore, myself, when I was your age, let me tell you. I hadn’t 
victuals enough to snore. And I didn’t four seven one. Not 
if I knew it.” 

Bitzer knuckled his forehead again, in a sneaking manner, 
and seemed at oiice particularly impressed and dejiressed by 
the instance last given of Mr. Bounderby’s moral abstinence. 

• “ A hundred and fifty odd pound,” resumed Mr. Bounderby. 


l5o I/A/i!£> TIMES. 

“ That sum of, money, young Tom locked in his safe ; not a very 
strong safe, but that’s no matter now. Everything was left, all 
right. Some tune in the night, while this young fellow snored 
— Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am, you say you have heard him snore?” 

“Sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, “ I cannot say that I have heard 
him precisely snore, and therefore must not make that state- 
ment. But on winter evenings, when he has fallen asleep at 
his table, I have heard him, what I should prefer to describe as 
partially choke. I have heard him on such occasions produce 
sounds of a nature similar to what may be sometimes heard in 
Dutch clocks. Not,” said Mrs. Sparsit, with a lofty sense of 
giving strict evidence, “ that I would convey any imputation on 
his moral character. Far from it. I have always considered 
Bitzer a young man of the most upright principle ; and to that 
I beg to bear my testimony.” 

“ Well ! ” said the exasperated Bounderby, “ while he was snor- 
ing, or choking, or Dutch-clocking, or something or other — being 
asleep — some fellows, somehow, whether previously concealed 
in the house or not remains to be seen, got to young Tom’s safe, 
forced it, and abstracted the contents. Being then disturbed, 
they made off ; letting themselves out at the main door, and 
double-locking it again (it was double-locked, and the key 
under Mrs. Sparsit’s pillow) with a false key, which was picked 
up in the street near the Bank, about twelve o’clock to-day. 
No alarm takes place, till this chap, Bitzer, turns out this morn- 
ing, and begins to open and prepare the offices for business. 
Then, looking at Tom’s safe, he sees the door ajar, and linds 
the lock forced, and the money gone.” 

“Where is Tom, by the by?” asked Harthouse, glancing 
round. 

“He has been helping the police,” said Bounderby, “and 
stays behind at the Bank. I wish these fellows had tried to rob 
me when I was at his time of life. They would have been out 
of pocket if they had invested eighteenpence in the job : I can 
tell ’em that.” 

“ Is anybody suspected ? ” 

“ Suspected ? I should think there was somebody sus- 
pected. Egod ! ” said Bounderby, relinquishing Mrs. Sparsit’s 
arm to wipe his heated head. “ Josiah Bounderby of Coke- 
town is not to be p-lundered and nobody suspected. No, thank 
you ! ” 

Might Mr. Harthouse inquire Who was suspected? 

“ Well,” said Bounderby, stopping and facing about to con- 
front them all, “ I’ll tell you. It’s not to be mentioned ever_f- 


HARD T/MRS. 


l6l 

where ; it’s not to be mentioned anywhere : in order that the 
scoundrels concerned (there’s a gang of ’em) maybe thrown off 
their guard. So take this in confidence. Now wait a bit.” 
Mr. Bounderby wiped his head again. “What should you say 
to ; ” here he violently exploded : “ to a Hand being in it ? ” 

“ I hope,” said Harthouse, lazily, “ not our friend Blackpot ? ” 

“ Say Pool instead of Pot, sir,” returned Bounderby, “ and 
that’s the man.” 

Louisa faintly uttered some word of incredulity and surprise. 

“ O yes ! I know ! ” said Bounderby, immediately catching at 
the sound. “ I know ! I am used to that. I know all about it. 
They are the finest people in the world, these fellows are. They 
have got the gift of the gab, they have. They only want to 
have their rights explained to them, they do. But I tell you 
what. Show me a dissatisfied Hand, and I’ll show you a man 
that’s fit for anything bad, I don’t care what it is.” 

Another of the popular fictions of Coketown, which some 
pains had been taken to disseminate — and which some people 
really believed. 

“ But I am acquainted with those chaps,” said Bounderby. 
“I can read ’em off, like books. Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am, I ap- 
peal to you. What warning did I give that fellow, the first time 
he set foot in the house, when the express object of his visit 
was to know how he could knock Religion over, and floor the 
Established Church ? Mrs. Sparsit, in point of high connex- 
ions, you are on a level with the aristocracy, — did I say, or did 
I not say, to that fellow, ‘you can’t hide the truth from me: 
you 'are not the kind of fellow I like ; you’ll come to no 
good’?” 

‘■‘Assuredly, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, “you did, in a 
highly impressive manner, give him such an admonition.” 

“ When he shocked you, ma’am,” said Bounderby ; “ v/hen 
he shocked your feelings ? ” 

“ Yes, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a meek shake of her 
head, “he certainly did so. Though I did not mean to say 
but that my feelings may be weaker on such points — more 
foolish if the term is preferred — than they might have been, if I 
had always occupied my present position.” 

Mr. Bounderby stared with a bursting pride at Mr. Hart- 
house, as much as to say, “ I am the proprietor of this female, 
and she’s worth your attention, I think.” Then, resumed his 
discourse. 

“ You can recall for yourself, Harthouse, what I said to him 
when yoii saw him. 1 didn’t mince the matter with him. I 


HA/^n TIMES. 


162 

am never mealy with ’em. I know ’em. Very well, sir. 
Three days after that, he bolted. Went off, nobody knows 
where : as my mother did in my infancy — only with this differ- 
ence, that he is a worse subject than my mother, if possible. 
What did he do before he went ? What do you say ; ” Mr. 
Bounderby, with his hat in his hand, gave a beat upon the 
crown at every little division of his sentences, as if it were a 
tambourine ; “ to his being seen — night after night — watching 
the Bank ? — to his lurking about there — after dark ? — to its 
striking Mrs. Sparsit — that he could be lurking for no good — 
to her calling Bitzeds attention to him, and their both taking 
notice of him — And to its appearing on inquiry to-day — that 
he was also noticed by the neighbours ? ” Having come to 
the climax, Mr. Bounderby, like an oriental dancer, put his 
tambourine on his head. 

‘•Suspicious,” said James Harthouse, “certainly.” 

“ 1 think so, sir,” said Bounderby, with a defiant nod. “ I 
think so. But there are more of ’em in it. There’s an old 
woman. One never hears of these things till the mischief’s 
done ; all sorts of defects are found out in the stable door after 
the horse is stolen ; there’s an old woman turns up now. An 
old woman who seems to have been fiying into town on a 
broomstick, every now and then. She watches the place a 
whole day before this fellow begins, and on the night when you 
saw him, she steals away with him, and holds a council with 
him — I suppose, to make her report on going off duty, and be 
damned to her.” 

There was such a person in the room that night, and she 
shrunk from observation, thought Louisa. 

“ This is not all of ’em, even as we already know ’em,” said 
Bounderby, with many nods of hidden meaning. “ But 1 have 
said enough for the i)resent. You’ll have 4he goodness to keep 
it quiet, and mention it to no one. It may take time, but we 
shall have ’em. It’s policy to give ’em line enough, and there’s 
no objection to that.” 

“ Of course, they will be punished with the utmost rigour of 
the law, as notice-boards observe,” replied John Harthouse, 
“ and serve them right. Fellows who go in for Banks must 
take the consequences. If there were no consequences, we 
should all go in for Banks.” He had gently taken Louisa’s 
parasol from her hand, and had put it up for her ; and she 
walked under its shade, though the sun did not shine there. 

“For the present, Loo Bounderby,” said her husband, 
“here’s Mrs. Sparsit to look after. Mrs. Sparsit’s nerves have 


HARD rmES. 


163 

been acted upon by this business, and she’ll stay here a day or 
two. So, make her comfortable.” 

“ Thank you very much, sir,” that discreet lady observed, 
“ but pray do not let My comfort be a consider^ltion. Any- 
thing will do for Me.” 

It soon appeared that if Mrs. Sparsit had a failing in her as- 
sociation with that domestic establishment, it was that she was 
so excessively regardless of herself and regardful of others, as to 
be a nuisance. On being shown her chamber, she was so 
dreadfully sensible of its comforts as to suggest the inference 
that she would have preferred to pass the night on the mangle 
in the laundry. True, the Powlers, and the Scadgerses were 
accustomed to splendour “ but it is my duty to remember,” 
Mrs. Sparsit was fond of observing with a lofty grace : particu- 
larly when any of the domestics were present, “ that what 1 
wa^ I am no longer. Indeed,” said she, “if I could alto- 
gether cancel the remembrance that Mr. Sparsit was a Powler, 
or that I myself am related to the Scadgers family; or if I 
could even revoke the fact, and make myself a person of com- 
mon descent and ordinary connexions ; I would gladly do so. 
I should think it, under existing circumstances, right to do so.” 
The same Hermitical state of mind led to her renunciation of 
made dishes and wines at dinner, until fairly commanded by 
Mr. Bounderby to take them ; when she said, “Indeed you are 
very good, sir ; ” and departed from a resolution of which she 
had made rather formal and public announcement, to “wait 
for the simple mutton.” She was likewise deeply apologetic 
for wanting the salt ; and feeling amiably bound to bear out 
Mr. Bounderby to the fullest extent in the testimony he had 
born to her nerves, occasionally sat back in her chair and 
silently wept; at which periods a tear of large dimensions, like 
crystal ear-ring, might be observed (or rather, must be, for it 
insisted on public notice) sliding down her Roman nose. 

But Mrs. Sparsit’s greatest point, first and last, was her de- 
termination to pity Mr. Bounderby. There were occasions 
when in looking at him she was involuntarily moved to shake 
her head, as who would say, “ Alas poor Yorick ! ” After al- 
lowing herself to be betrayed into these evidences of emotion, 
she would force a lambent brightness, and would be fitfully 
cheerful, and would say, “ You have still good spirits, sir, I am 
thankful to find ; ” and would appear to hail it as a blessed 
dispensation that Mr. Bounderby bore up as he did. One idio- 
^ syncrasy for which she often apologised, she found it exces- 
'sively difficult to conquer. She had a curious propensity to 


HARD TIMES. 


164 

call Mrs. Bounderby “ Miss Gradgrind,” and yielded to it some 
three or four score times in the course of the evening. Her 
repetition of this mistake covered Mrs. Sparsit with modest 
confusion ; but indeed, she said, it seemed so natural to say 
Miss Gradgrind : whereas, to persuade herself that the young 
lady whom she had had the happiness of knowing from a child 
could be really and truly Mrs. Bounderby, she found almost 
im]>ossible. It was a further singularity of this remarkable 
case, that the more she thought about it, the more impossible 
it appeared ; “the differences,” she observed, “being such.” 

In the drawing-room after dinner, Mr. Bounderby tried the 
case of the robbery, examined the witnesses, made notes of 
the evidence, found the suspected persons guilty, and sentenced 
them to the extreme punishment of the law. That done, Bit- 
zer was dismissed to town with instructions to recommend Tom 
to come home by the mail-train. 

When candles were brought, Mrs. Sparsit murmured, “ Don’t 
e low, sir. Pray let me see you cheerful, sir, as I used to 
do.” Mr. Bounderby, upon whom these consolations had be- 
gun to produce the effect of making him, in a bull headed 
blundering way, sentimental, sighed like some large sea-animal. 
“ 1 cannot bear to see you so, sir,” said Mrs. Sparsit. “Try a 
hand at backgammon, sir, as you used to do when I had the 
honour of living under your roof.” “ I haven’t played back- 
gammon, ma’am,” said Mr. Bounderby, “since that time.” 
“No, sir,” said Mrs. Si)arsit, soothingly, “I am aware that 
you have not. I remember that Miss Gradgrind takes no in- 
terest in the game. But I shall be happy, sir, if you will con- 
descend.” 

They played near a window, opening on the garden. It was 
a fine night : not moonlight, but sultry and fragrant. IvOuisa 
and Mr. Harthouse strolled out into the garden, where their 
voices could be heard in the stillness, though not what they 
said. Mrs. Sparsit, from her place at the backgammon board, 
was constantly straining her eyes to pierce the shadows with- 
out. “What’s the matter, ma’am?” said Mr. Bounderby; 
“you don’t see a Fire, do you?” “Oh dear no, sir,” re- 
turned Mrs. Sparsit, “ I was thinking of the dew.” “ What 
have you got to do with the dew, ma’am?” said Mr. Bound- 
erby. “It’s not myself, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, “I am 
fearful of Miss Gradgrind’s taking cold.” “ She never takes 
cold,” said Mr. Bounderby. “Really, sir?” said Mrs. Spar- 
sit. And was affected with a cough in her throat. 

When the time drew near for retiring, Mr. Bounderby took 


/lA/^D TIMES. 


165 


a glass of water. “Oh, sir?” said Mrs. Sparsit. “Not your 
sherry warm, with lemon-peel and nutmeg ? ” “ Why I have 

got out of the habit of taking it now, ma’am,” said Mr. Bound- 
erby. “ The more’s the i)ity, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit ; 
“you are losing all your good old habits. Cheer up, sir! If 
Miss Gradgrind will permit me, I will offer to make it for you, 
as I have often done.” 

Miss Gradgrind readily permitting Mrs. Sparsit to do anything 
she pleased, that considerate lady made the beverage, and 
handed it to Mr. Bounderby. “ It will do you good, sir. It will 
warm your heart. It is the sort of thing you want, and ought 
to take, sir.” And when Mr. Bounderby said, “ Your health, 
ma’am ! ” she answered with great feeling. “ Thank you, sir. 
The same to you, and happiness also.” Finally, she wished 
him good night, with great pathos ; and Mr. Bounderby went to 
bed, with a maudlin persuasion that he had been crossed in 
something tender, though he could not, for his life, have men- 
tioned what it was. 

Long after Louisa had undressed and lain down, she watched 
and waited for her brother’s coming home. That could hardly 
be, she knew, until an hour past midnight ; but in the country 
silence, which did anything but calm the trouble of her thoughts, 
time lagged wearily. At last, when the darkness and stillness 
had seemed for hours to thicken one another, she heard the bell 
at the gate. She felt as though she would have been glad that 
it rang on until day-light ; but it ceased, and the circles of its 
last sound spread out fainter and wider in the air, and all was 
dead again. 

She waited yet some quarter of an hour, as she judged. Then 
she arose, put on a loose robe, and went out of her room in 
the dark, and up the staircase to her brother’s room. His door 
being shut, she softly opened it and spoke to him, approaching 
his bed with a noiseless step. 

She kneeled down beside it, passed her arm over his neck, 
and drew his face to hers. She knew that he only feigned to be 
asleep, but she said nothing to him. 

He started by and by as if he were just then awakened, and 
asked who that was, and what was the matter ? 

“ Tom, have you anything to -tell me ? If ever you loved me 
in your life, and have anything concealed from every one be- 
sides, tell it to me.” 

“ I don’t know what you mean. Loo. You have been dream- 
ing.” 

“ My dear brother : ” she laid her head down on his pillow, 


TIMES. 


1 66 

and her hair flowed over him as if she would hide him from 
every one but herself: “is there nothing that you have to tell 
me ? Is there nothing you can tell me if you will ? You can 
tell me nothing that will change me. O Tom, tell me the 
truth ! ” 

“ I don’t know what you mean, Loo ! ” 

“ As you lie here alone, my dear, in the melancholy night, so 
you must lie somewhere one night, when even I, if I am living 
then, shall have left you. As I am here beside you, barefoot, 
unclothed, undistinguishable in darkness, so must I lie through 
all the night of my decay, until I am dust. In the name of 
that time, Tom, tell me the truth now ! ” 

“ What is it you want to know ? ” 

“You may be certain;” in the energy of her love she took 
him to her bosom as if he were a child ; “ that I will not re- 
proach you. You may be certain that I will be compassionate 
and true to you. You may be certain that I will save you at 
whatever cost. O Tom, have you nothing to tell me ? Whis- 
per very softly. Say only ‘ yes,’ and I shall understand you ! ” 

She turned her ear to his lips, but he remained doggedly si- 
lent. 

“ Not a word, Tom ? ” 

“ How can I say Yes, or how can I say No, when I don’t 
know what you mean ? Loo, you are a brave, kind girl, worthy 
I begin to think of a better brother than I am. But I have 
nothing more to say. Go to bed, go to bed.” 

“You are tired,” she whispered presently, more in her usual 
way. 

“Yes, I am quite tired out.” 

“You have been so hurried and disturbed to-day. Have any 
fresh discoveries been made ? ” 

“ Only those you have heard of, from — him.” 

“ Tom, have you said to any one that we made a visit to . 
those people, and that we saw those three together ? ” 

“No. Didn’t you yourself particularly ask me to keep it 
quiet, when you asked me to go there with you ? ” 

“Yes. But I did not know then what was going to hap- 
pen.” 

“ Nor I neither. How could T ? ” 

He was very quick upon her with this retort. 

“ Ought I to say, after what has happened,” said his sister, 
standing by the bed— she had gradually withdrawn herself and 
risen, “ that I made that visit? Should I say so ? Must I say 
so ? ” 


TIAIES, 


167 

“ Good Heavens, Loo,” returned her brother, “ you are not 
in the habit of asking my advice. Say what you like. If you 
keep it to yourself, I shall keep it to wj^self. If you disclose it, 
there’s an end of it.” 

It was too dark for either to see the other’s face ; but each 
seemed very attentive, and to consider before speaking. 

“ Tom, do you believe the man I gave the money to, is really 
implicated in this crime ? ” 

“ I don’t know. I don’t see why he shouldn’t be.” 

“ He seemed to me an honest man.” 

“ Another person may seem to you dishonest, and yet not be 
so.” 

There was a pause, for he had hesitated and stopped. 

“ In short,” resumed Tom, as if he had made up his mind, 
“ if you come to that, perhaps I was so far from being alto- 
gether in his favour, that I took him outside the door to tell him 
quietly, that I thought he might consider himself very well off 
to get such a windfall as he had got from my sister, and that I 
, hoped he would make good use of it. You remember whether 
I took him out or not. I say nothing against the man ; he may 
be a very good fellow, for anything I know ; I hope he is.” 

< “ Was he offended by what you said ? ” 

“ No, he took it pretty well ; he was civil enough. Where 
are you. Loo?” He sat up in bed and kissed her. “Good 
night, my dear, good night ! ” 
j “ You have nothing more to tell me ? ” 
f “No. What should I have? You wouldn’t have me tell 
■Jj you a lie ? ” 

“ I wouldn’t have you do that to-night, Tom, of all the 
T nights in your life. ; many and much happier as I hope they will 
£ t>e.” 

4 “ Thank you, my dear Loo. I am so tired, that I am sure I 

4 wonder I don’t say anything to get to sleep. Go to bed, go to 
.|bed.” 

Kissing her again, he turned round, drew the coverlet over 
his head, and lay as still as if that time had come by which she 
had adjured him. She stood for some time at the bedside be- 
fore she slowly moved away. She stopped at the door, looked 
rHback when she had opened it, and asked him if he had called 
^ 'her? But he lay still, and she softly closed, the door and re- 
turned to her room. 

Then the wretched boy looked cautiously up and found her 
gone, crept out of bed, and threw himself upon his pillow again : 
tearing his hair, morosely crying, grudgingly loving her, hatefully 


i68 


HARD TIMES. 


but impeniteutly spurning himself, and no less hatefully and un- 
profitably spurning all the good in the world. 


CHAPTER IX. 

Hearing the last of It. 

SPARS IT, lying by to recover the tone of her 
ves in Mr. Bounderby’s retreat, kept such a sharp 
k;-out, night and day, under her Coriolanian eye- 
vvs, that her eyes, like a couple of lighthouses on an 
iron-bound coast, might have warned all prudent mariners from 
that bold rjDck her Roman nose and the dark and craggy region 
in its neighbourhood, but for the placidity of her manner. Al- 
though it was hard to believe that her retiring for the night 
could be anything but a form, so severely wide awake were 
those classical eyes of hers, and so impossible did it seem that 
her rigid nose could yield To any relaxing influence, yet her 
manner of sitting, smoothing her uncomfortable, not to say, 
gritty mittens (they were constructed of a cool fabric like a 
meat-safe), or of ambling to unknown places of destination with 
her foot in her cotton stirrup, was so perfectly serene, that most 
observers would have bden constrained to suppose her a dove, 
embodied by some freak of nature, in the earthly tabernacle of 
a bird of the hook-beaked order. 

She was a most wonderful woman for prowling about the 
house. How she got from story to story was a mystery beyond 
solution. A lady so decorous in herself, and so highly con- 
nected, was not to be suspected of dropping over the banisters 
or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary facility of locomo- 
tion suggested the wild idea. Another noticeable circumstance 
in Mrs. Sparsit was, that she was never hurried. She would 
shoot with consummate velocity from the roof to the hall, yet 
would be in full possession of her breath and dignity on the 
moment of her arrival there. Neither was she ever seen by 
human vision to go at a great pace. 

She took very kindly to Mr. Harthouse, and had some pleas- 
•ant conversation with him soon after her arrival. She made 
him her stately curtsey in the garden, one morning before break- 
fast. 

“ It appears but yesterday, sir,” said Mrs. Sparsit, “ that I 



JIA/^D TIMES. 


169 

had the honour of receiving you at the Bank, when you were so 
good as to wish to be made acquainted with Mr. Bounderby’s 
address.” 

“ An occasion, I am sure, not to be forgotten by myself in 
the course of Ages,” said Mr. Harthouse, inclining his head to 
Mr. Sparsit with the most indolent of all possible airs. 

“We live in a singular world, sir,” said Mrs. Sparsit. 

“ I have had the honour, by a coincidence of which I am 
proud, to have made a remark, similar in effect, though not so 
epigrammatically expressed.” 

“ A singular world I would say, sir,” pursued Mrs. Sparsit ; 
after acknowledging the compliment with a drooping of her 
dark eyebrows, not altogether so mild in its expression as her 
voice was in its dulcet tones ; “ as regards the intimacies we form 
at one time, with individuals we were quite ignorant of, at 
another. I recall, sir, that on that occasion you went so 
far as to say you were actually apprehensive of Miss Grad- 
grind.” 

“Your memory does me more honour than my insignificance 
deserves. I availed myself of your obliging hints to correct 
my timidity, and it is unnecessary to add that they were perfectly 
accurate. Mrs. Sparsit’ s talent for — in fact for anything re- 
quiring accuracy — with a combination of strength of mind — 
and Family — is too habitually developed to admit of any ques- 
tion.” He was almost falling asleep over this compliment ; it 
took him so long to get through, arid his mind wandered so 
much in the course of its execution. 

“ You found Miss Gradgrind — I really cannot call her Mrs, 
Bounderby ; it’s very absurd of me — as youthful as I described 
her ? ” asked Mrs. Sparsit, sweetly. 

“You drew her portrait perfectly,” said Mr. Harthouse. 
“ Presented her dead image.” 

“ Very engaging, sir,” said Mrs. Sparsit, causing her mittens 
slowly to revolve over one another. 

“ Highly so.” 

“ It used to be considered,” said Mrs. Sparsit, “ that Miss 
Gradgrind was wanting in animation, but I confess she appears 
to me considerably and strikingly improved in that respect. Ay, 
and indeed here is Mr. Bounderby ! ” cried Mrs. Sparsit, nod- 
ding her head a great many times, as if she had been talking 
and thinking of no one else. “ How do you find yourself thi» 
morning, sir ? Pray let us see you cheerful, sir.” 

Now, these persistent assuagements of his misery, and light- 
enings of his load, had by this time begun to have the effect 
8 


I/O 


I/A/^n TIMES. 


of making Mr. Bounderby softer than usual towards Mrs. Spar- 
sit, and harder than usual to most other people from his wife 
downward. So, when Mrs. Sparsit said with forced lightness 
of heart, “ You want your breakfast, sir, but I daresay Miss 
Gradgrind will soon be here to preside at the table,” Mr. Bound- 
erby replied, “ If I waited to be taken care of by my wife, 
ma’am, I believe you know pretty well I should wait till Dooms- 
day, so I’ll trouble you to take charge of the teapot.” Mrs. 
Sparsit complied, and assumed her old position at table. 

This again made the excellent woman vastly sentimental. 
She was so humble withal, that when Louisa appeared, she rose, 
protesting she never could think of sitting in that place under 
existing circumstances, often as she had had the honour — of 
making Mr. Bounderby’s breakfast, before Mrs. Gradgrind — she 
begged pardon, she meant to say. Miss Bounderby — she hoped 
to be excused, but she really could not get it right yet, though 
she trusted to become familiar with it by and by — had as- 
sumed her present position. It was only (she observed) be- 
cause Miss Gradgrind happened to be a little late, and Mr. 
Bounderby’s time is so very precious, and she knew it of old 
to be so essential that he should breakfast to the moment, that 
she had taken the liberty of complying with his request, long as 
his will had been a law to her. 

“ There ! Stop where you are, ma’am,” said Mr. Bounderby, 
“ stop where you are ! Mrs. Bounderby will be very glad to be 
relieved of the trouble, I believe.” 

“Don’t say that, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, almost with 
severity, “because that is very unkind to Mrs. Bounderby. 
And to be unkind is not to be you, sir.” 

“You may set your mind at rest, ma’am. — You can take it 
very quietly, can’t you. Loo ?” said Mr. Bounderby, in a bluster- 
ing way to his wife. 

“Of course. It is of no moment. Why should it be of 
any importance to me ? ” 

“ Why should it be of any importance to any one, Mrs. Spar- 
sit, ma’am?” said Mr. Bounderby, swelling with a sense of 
slight. “You attach too much importance to these things, 
rna’am. By George, you’ll be corrupted in some of your no- 
tions here. You are old fashioned, ma’am. You are behind 
Tom Gradgrind’ s children’s time.” 

“What is the matter with you?” asked Louisa, coldly sur- 
prised. “What has given you offence ? ” 

“ Offence ! ” repeated Bounderby. “ Do you suppose if there 
was any offence given me, I shouldn’t name it, and request to 


o 


BOOK THE THIRD.— GARNERING* 


CHAPTER I. 

Another Thing Needful. 

“OUISA awoke from a torpor, and her eyes languidly 
opened on her old bed at home, and her old room. It 
seemed, at first, as if all that had happened since the 
days when these objects were familiar to her were the 
shadows of a dream ; but gradually, as the objects became more 
real to her sight, the evonts became more real to her mind. 

She could scarcely move her head for pain and heaviness, her 
eyes were strained and sore, and she was very weak. A cu- 
rious passive inattention had such 'possession of her, that the 
presence of her little sister in the room did not attract her no- 
tice for some time. Even when their eyes had met, and her 
sister had approached the bed, Louisa lay for minutes looking 
at her in silence, and suffering her timidly to hold her passive 
hand, before she asked : 

“ When was I brought to this room ? " 

“ Last night, Louisa.” 

“ Who brought me here ? ” 

“Sissy, I believe.” 

“ Why do you believe so ? ” 

“Because I found her here this morning. She didn’t come 
to my bedside to wake me, as she always does ; and I went to 
look for her. She was not in her own room either ; and I went 
looking for her all over the house, until I found her here, taking 
care of you and cooling your head. Will you see father ? Sissy 
said I was to tell him when you woke.” 

“ What a beaming face you have, Jane ! ” said Louisa, as 
her young sister — timidly still — bent down to kiss her. 

“ Have I ? I am very glad you think so. I am sure it 
must be Sissy’s doing.” 

The arm Louisa had begun to twine about her neck, unbent 



192 


IfA/^D TIMES. 


itself. “ You can tell father, if you will.” Tlien, staying her a 
moment, she said, “ It was you who made my room so cheerful, 
and gave it this look of welcome ? ” 

“ Oh no, I^ouisa, it was done before I came. It was — ” 

Louisa turned upon her pillow, and heard no more. When 
her sister hail withdrawn, she turned her head back again, and 
lay with her face towards the door, until it opened and her fa- 
ther entered. 

He had«a jaded anxious look upon him, and his hand, usually 
steady, trembled in hers. He sat down at the side of the bed, 
tenderly asking how she was, and dwelling on the necessity of 
her keeping very quiet after her agitation and exposure to the 
weather last night. He spoke in a subdued and troubled voice, 
very different from his usual dictatorial manner ; and was often at 
a loss for words. 

“ My dear Louisa. My poor daughter.” He was so much 
at a loss at that place, that he stopped altogether. He tried 
again. 

My unfortunate child.” The place was so difficult to get 
over, that he tried again. 

“ It would be hopeless for me, Louisa, to endeavour to tell you 
how overwhelmed I have been, and still am, by what broke upon 
me last night. The ground*on which I stand has ceased to be 
solid under my feet. The only support on which I leaned, and 
the strength of which it seemed and still does seem, impossible 
to question, has given way in an instant. I am stunned by 
these discoveries. I have no selfish meaning in what I say ; 
but I find the shock of what broke upon me last night, to be 
very heavy indeed.” 

She could give him no comfort herein. She had suffered the 
wreck of her whole life upon the rock. 

“ I will not say, Louisa, that if you had by any happy chance, 
undeceived me some time ago, it would have been better for 
us both ; better for your peace, and better for mine. For I am 
sensible that it may not have been a part of my system to invite 
any confidence of that kind. I have proved my — my system 
to myself, and I have rigidly administered it, and I must bear 
the responsibility of its failures. I only entreat you to believe, 
my favourite child, that I have meant to do right.” 

He said it so earnestly, and to do him justice he had. In 
gauging fathomless deeps with his little mean excise-rod, and in 
staggering over the universe with his rusty stiff-legged com- 
passes, he had meant to do great things. Within the limits of 
his short tether he had tumbled about, annihilating the flowers 


JIAJ?D TIMES. 


193 

of existence with greater singleness of purpose than many of the 
blatant personages whose company he kept. 

“ I am well assured of what you say, father. I know I have 
been your favourite child. I know you have intended to make 
me happy. I have never blamed you, and I never shall.” 

He took her outstretched hand and retained it in his. 

“ My dear, I have remained all night at my table, pondering 
again and again on what has so painfully passed between us. 
When I consider your character ; when I consider that what 
has been known to me for hours, has been concealed by you 
for years ; when I consider under what immediate pressure it 
has been forced from you at last ; Lcome to the conclusion that 
I canpot but mistrust myself.” 

He might have added more than all, when he saw the face 
now looking at him. He did add it in effect, perhaps, as he 
softly moved her scattered hair from her forehead with his hand. 
Such little actions, slight in another man, were very noticea- 
ble in him ; arid his daughter received them as if they had been 
words of contrition. 

“ But,” said Mr. Gradgrind, slowly, and with hesitation, as 
well as with a wretched sense of helplessness, “ if I see reason 
to mistrust myself for the past, I.ouisa, I should also mistrust 
myself for the present and the future. To speak unreservedly 
to you, I do. I am far from feeling convinced now, however 
differently I might have felt only this time yesterday, that I am 
fit for the trust you repose in me ; that I know how to respond 
to the appeal you have come home to make to me ; that I have 
the right instinct — supposing it for the moment to be some 
quality of that nature — how to help you, and to set you right, 
my child.” 

She had turned upon her pillow, and lay with her face upon 
her arm, so that he could not see it. All her wildness and pas- 
sion had subsided ; but, though softened, she was not in tears. 
Her father was changed in nothing so much as in the respect 
that he would have been glad to see her in tears. 

“ Some persons hold,” he pursued, still hesitating, ‘‘ that there 
is a wisdom of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of the 
Heart. I have not supposed so ; but, as I have said, I mis- 
trust myself now. I have supposed the Head to be all-sufficient. 
It may not be all-sufficient ; how can I venture this morning to 
, say it is ! If that other kind of wisdom should be what I have 
1 neglected, and should be the instinct that is wanted, Louisa — ” 

He suggested it very doubtfully, as if he were half unwilling 
to admit it even now. She made him no answer ; lying before 


194 


I/A/^D TIMES. 


him on her bed, still half-dressed, much as he had seen her ly- 
ing- on the floor of his room last night. 

“ Louisa,” and his hand rested on her hair again, “ I have 
been absent from here, my dear, a good deal of late ; and 
though your sister’s training has been ]:)ursued according tO' — 
the system,” he appeared to come to that word with great re- 
luctance always, “ has necessarily been modified by daily asso- 
ciations begun, in her case, at an early age. I ask you — igno- 
rantly and humbly, my daughter — for the better, do you think ? ” 

“ Father,” she replied, without stirring, “ if any harmony has 
been awakened in her young breast that was mute in mine until 
it turned to discord, let her ^thank Heaven for it, and go upon 
her happier way, taking it as her greatest blessing that she has 
avoided my way.” 

“ O my child, my child ! ” he said, in a forlorn manner, “ I 
am an unhappy man to see you thus ! What avails it to me 
that you do not reproach me, if I so bitterly reproach myself! ” 
He bent his head, and spoke low to her. “ Louisa, I have a 
misgiving that some change may have been slowly working about 
me in this house, by mere love and gratitude ; that what the 
Head had left undone and could not do, the Heart may have 
been doing silently. Can it be so ? ” 

She made him no reply. 

“ I am too proud to believe it, Louisa. How could I be ar- 
rogant, and you before me I Can it be so ? Is it so, my 
dear ? ” 

He looked upon her, once more, lying cast away there ; and 
without another word went out of the room. He had not been 
long gone, when she heard a light tread near the door, and she 
knew that some one stood beside hex. 

She did not raise her head. A dull anger that she should be 
seen in her distress, and that the involuntary look she had so re- 
sented should come to this fulfilment, smouldered within her 
like an unwholesome fire. All closely imprisoned forces rend 
and destroy. The air that would be healthful to the earth, the 
water that would enrich it, the heat that would ripen it, tear it 
when caged up. So in her bosom even now; the strongest 
qualities she possessed, long turned upon themselves, became 
a heap of obduracy, that rose against a friend. 

It was well that soft touch came upon her neck, and that she 
understood herself to be supposed to have fallen asleep. The 
sympathetic hand did not claim her resentment. Let it lie there, 
let it lie. 

It lay there, warming into life a crowd of gentler thoughts ; 


HARD TIMES. 


171 

have it corrected ? I am a straightforward man, I believe. I 
don’t go beating about for side winds.” 

“ I suppose no one ever had occasion to think you too diffi- 
dent, or too delicate,” Louisa answered him composedly : “ I 
have never made that objection to you, either as a child or as 
a woman. I don’t understand what you would have.” 

“Have?” returned Mr. Bounderby. “Nothing. Other- 
wise, don’t you, Loo Bounderby, know thoroughly well that I, 
Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, would have it? ” 

She looked at him, as he struck the table and made the tea- 
cups ring, with a proud colour in her face that was anew change, 
Mr. Harthouse thought. “You are incomprehensible this 
morning,” said Louisa. “ Pray take no further trouble to ex- 
plain yourself. I am not curious to know your meaning. 
What does it matter ! ” 

Nothing more was said on this theme, and Mr. Harthouse 
was soon idly gay on indifferent subjects. But from this day, 
the Sparsit action upon Mr. Bounderby threw Louisa and James 
Harthouse more together, and strengthened the dangerous aliena- 
tion from her husband and confidence against him with another, 
into which she had fallen by degrees so fine that she could not re- 
trace them if she tried. But, whether she ever tried or no, lay 
hidden in her own closed heart. 

Mrs. Sparsit was so much affected on this particular occasion, 
that, assisting Mr. Bounderby to his hat after breakfast, and 
being then alone with -him in the hall, she imprinted a chaste 
kiss upon his hand, murmured “ My benefactor ! ” and retired, 
overwhelmed with grief. Yet it is an indubitable fact, within 
the cognizance of this history, that five minutes after he had 
left the house in the self-same hat, the same descendant of the 
Scadgerses and connexion by matrimony of the Powlers, shook 
her right-hand mitten at his portrait, made a contemptuous 
grimace at that work of art, and said “ Serve you right, you 
Noodle, and I am glad of it ! ” 

Mr. Bounderby had not been long gone, when Bitzer appeared. 
Bitzer had come down by train, shrieking and rattling over the 
long line of arches that bestrode the wild country of past and 
present coalpits, with an express from Stone Lodge. It was a 
liasty note to inform Louisa, that Mrs. Gradgrind lay very ill. She 
had never been well within her daughter’s knowledge ; but, 
she had declined within the last few days, had continued sink- 
ing all through the night, and was now as nearly dead, as her 
limited capacity of being in any state that implied the ghost of 
an intention to get out of it, allowed. 


172 


HARD TIMES. 


Accompanied by the lightest of porters, fit colourless servi- 
tor at Death’s door when Mrs. Gradgrind knocked, Louisa rum- 
bled to Coketown, over the coalpits past and present, and was 
whirled into its smoky jaws. She dismissed the messenger to 
his own devices, and rode away to her old home. 

She had seldom been there since her marriage. Her father 
was usually sifting and sifting at his parliamentary cinder-heap in 
London (without being observed to turn up many precious arti- 
cles among the rubbish), and was still hard at it in the national 
dust-yard. Her mother had taken it rather as a disturbance 
than otherwise, to be visited, as she reclined upon her sofa ; 
young people, Louisa felt herself all unfit for; Sissy she had 
never softened to again, since the night when the stroller’s child 
had raised her eyes to look at Mr. Bounderby’s intended wife. 
She had no inducements to go back, and had rarely gone. 

Neither, as she approached her old home now, did any of the 
best influences of old home descend upon her. The dreams of 
childhood — its airy fables ; its graceful, beautiful, humane, im- 
possible adornments of the world beyond : so good to be believed 
in once, so good to be remembered when outgrown, for then 
the least among them rises to the stature of a great Charity in 
the heart, suffering little children to come into the midst of it, 
and to keep with their pure hands a garden in the stony 
ways of this world, wherein it were better for all the children of 
Adam that they should oftener sun themselves, simple and 
trustful, and not worldly-wise — what had she to do with these ? 
Remembrances of how she had journeyed to the little that she 
knew, by the enchanted roads of what she and millions of in- 
nocent creatures had hoped and imagined ; of how, first com- 
ing upon Reason through the tender light of Fancy, she had 
seen it a beneficent god, deferring to gods as great as itself : not 
a grim Idol, cruel and cold, with its victims bound hand to foot, 
and its big dumb shape set up with a sightless stare, never to be 
moved by anything but so many calculated tons of leverage — 
what had she to do with these ? Her remembrances of home 
and childhood were remembrances of the drying up of every 
spring and fountain in her young heart as it gushed out. The 
golden waters were not there. They were flowing for the fer- 
tilisation of the land where grapes are gathered from thorns, 
and figs from thistles. 

She went, with a heavy, hardened kind of sorrow upon her, 
into the house and into her mother’s room. Since the time of 
her leaving home, Sissy had lived with the rest of the family on 


HA/^D TIMES. 


173 

equal terms. Sissy was at her mother’s side ; and Jane, her 
sister, now ten or twelve years old, was in the room. 

There was great trouble before it could be made known to 
Mrs. Gradgrind that her eldest child was there. She reclined, 
propped up, from mere habit, on a couch : as nearly in her old 
usual attitude, as anything sO helpless could be kept in. She 
had positively refused to take to her bed ; on the ground that if 
she did, she would never hear the last of it. 

Her feeble voice sounded so far away in her bundle of shawls, 
and the sound of another voice addressing her seemed to take 
such a long time in getting down to her ears, that she might 
have been lying at the bottom of a well. The old lady was 
nearer Truth than she ever had been : which had much to do 
with it. 

On being told that Mrs. Bounderby was there, she replied, at 
cross-purposes, that she had never called him by that name, 
since he married Louisa ; that pending her choice of an objec- 
tionable name, she had called him J ; and that she could not at 
present depart from that regulation, not being yet provided with 
a permanent substitute. Louisa had sat by her for some min- 
utes, and had spoken to her often, before she arrived at a clear 
understanding who it was. She then seemed to come to it all 
at once. 

“Well, my dear,” said Mrs. Gradgrind, “and I hope you are 
going on satisfactorily to yourself. It was all your father’s do- 
ing. He set his heart upon it. And he ought to know.” 

“ I want to hear of you, mother ; not of myself.” 

“ You want to hear of me, my dear ? That’s something new, 
I am sure, when anybody wants to hear of me. Not at all well, 
I^ouisa. Very faint and giddy.” 

“ Are you in pain, dear mother ? ” 

“ I think there’s a pain somewhere in the room,” said Mrs. 
Gradgrind, “ but I couldn’t positively say that I have got it.” 

After this strange speech, she lay silent for some time. Lou- 
isa, holding her hand, could feel no pulse ; but kissing it, could 
see a slight thin thread of life in fluttering motion. 

“ You very seldom see your sister,” said Mrs. Gradgrind. 
“ She grows like you. I wish you would look at her. Sissy, 
bring her here.” 

She was brought, and stood with her hand in her sister’s. 
Louisa had observed her with her arm round Sissy’s neck, and 
she felt the difference of this approach. 

“ Do you see the likeness, Louisa ? ” 

“ Yes, mother. I should think her like me. But — 


174 


TIMES. 


“ Eh ? Yes, I always say so,” Mrs. Gradgrind cried, with un- 
expected quickness. “ And that reminds me.' I — I want to 
speak to you, my dear. Sissy my good girl, leave us alone a 
minute.” 

Louisa had relinquished the hand : had thought that her sis- 
ter’s was a better and brighter face than hers had ever been : had 
seen in it, not without a rising feeling of resentment, even in 
that place and at that time, something of the gentleness of the 
other face in the room ; the sweet face with the trusting eyes, 
made paler than Avatching and sympathy made it, by the rich 
dark hair. 

Left alone with her mother, Louisa saw her lying with an 
awful lull upon her face, like one who was floating away upon 
some great water, all resistance over, content to be carried down 
the stream. She put the shadow of a hand to her lips again, 
and recalled her. 

“ You were going to speak to me, mother.” 

“ Eh? Yes, to be sure, my dear. You know that your fa- 
ther is almost always away now, and therefore I must write to 
him about it.” 

^ “ About what, mother ? Don't be troubled. About what ? ” 

‘‘You must remember, my dear, that whenever I have said 
anything, on any subject, I have never heard the last of it; and 
consequently, that I have long left off saying anything.” 

“ I can hear you, mother.” But it was only by dint of bend- 
ing down her ear, and at the same time attentively watch- 
ing the lips as they moved, that she could link such faint and 
broken sounds into any chain of connexion. 

“You learnt a great deal, Louisa, and so did your brother. 
Ologies of all kinds from morning to night. If there is any 
Ology left, of any description, that has not been worn to rags in 
this house, all I can say is, I hope I shall never hear its 
name.” 

“ I can hear you, mother, when you have strength to go on.” 
This, to keep her from floating away. 

“ But there is something — not an Ology at all — that your fa- 
ther has missed, or forgotten, Louisa. I don’t know what it is. 
I have often sat with Sissy near me, and thought about it. I 
shall never get its name now. But your father may. It makes 
me restless. I want to write to him, to find out for God’s sake 
what it is. Give me a pen, give me a pen.” 

Even the power of restlessness was gone, except from the 
poor head, which could just turn from side to side. 

She fancied, however, that her request had been complied 


HARD TIMES. 


175 


with, and that the pen she could not have held was in her hand. 
It matters little what figures of wonderful no-meaning she be- 
gan to trace upon her wrappers. The hand soon stopped in 
the midst of them ; the light that had always been feeble and 
dim behind the weak transparency, went out, and even Mrs. 
Gradgrind, emerged from the shadow in which man walketh and 
disquieteth himself in vain, took upon her the dread solemnity 
of the sages, and patriarchs. 


CHAPTER X. 

Mrs. Sparsi{*s Staircase. 

l&^ynRS. SPARSIT’S nerves being slow to recover their 
S tone, the worthy woman made a stay of some weeks 
in duration at Mr. Bounderby’s retreat, where, not- 
withstanding her anchorite turn of mind based upon 
her becoming consciousness of her altered station, she re- 
signed herself with noble fortitude to lodging, as one may say, 
in clover, and feeding on the fat of the land. During the 
whole term of this recess from the guardianship of the Bank, 
Mrs. Sjiarsit was a pattern of consistency ; continuing to take 
such pity on Mr. Bounderby to his face, as is rarely taken on 
man, and to call his portrait a Noodle to its face, with the great- 
est acrimony and contempt. 

Mr. Bounderby, having got it into his explosive composition 
that Mrs. Sparsit was a highly superior woman to perceive that 
he had that general cross upon him in his deserts (for he had 
not yet settled what it was), and further, that Louisa would have 
objected to her as a frequent visitor if it had comported with 
his greatness that she should object to anything he choose to 
do, resolved not to lose sight of Mrs. Sparsit easily. So when 
her nerves were strung up to the pitch of again consuming 
sweet-breads in solitude, he said to her at the dinner-table, on 
the day before her departure, “ 1 tell you what, ma’am ; you shall 
come down here of a Saturday, while the fine weather lasts, and 
stay till Monday.” To which Mrs. Sparsit returned, in effect, 
though not of the Mohammedan persuasion : “ To hear is to 
obey.” 

Now Mrs. Sparsit was not a poetical woman ; but she took 
an idea in the nature of an allegorical fancy, into her head. 


176 


HARD TIMES, 


Much watching of Louisa, and much consequent observation 
of herinpenetrable demeanour, which keenly whetted and sharp- 
ened Mrs. Sparsit’s edge, must have given her as it were a lift, 
in the way of inspiration. She erected in her mind a mighty 
Staircase, with a dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom ; 
and down those stairs, from day to day and hour to hour, she 
saw Louisa coming. 

It became the business of Mrs. Sparsit’s life, to look up at 
her staircase, and to watch Lousia coming down. Sometimes 
slowly, sometimes quickly, sometimes several steps at one bout, 
sometimes stopping, never turning back. If she had once 
turned back, it might have been the death of Mrs. Sparsit in 
spleen and grief. 

She had been descending steadily, to the day, and on the day, 
when Mr. Bounderby issued the weekly invitation recorded above. 
Mrs. Sparsit was in good spirits, and inclined to be conversa- 
tional. 

“And pray, sir,” said she, “ if I may venture to ask a ques- 
tion appertaining to any subject on which you show reserve — 
which is indeed hardy in me, for I well know you have a reason 
for everything you do — have you received intelligence respect- 
ing the robbery ? ” 

“ Why, ma’am, no ; not yet. Under the circumstances, I 
didn’t expect it yet. Rome wasn’t built in a day, ma’am.” 

“ Very true, sir,” said Mrs. Sparsit, shaking her head. 

“ Nor yet in a week, ma’am.” 

“ No, indeed, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a gentle mel- 
ancholy upon her. 

“ In a similar manner, ma’am,” said Bounderby, “ I can wait, 
you know. If Romulus and Remus could wait, Josiah Bound- 
erby can wait. They were better otf in their youth than I was, 
however. They had a she-wolf for a nurse ; / had only a she- 
wolf for a grandmother. She didn’t give any milk, ma’am ; she 
gave bruises. She was a regular Alderney at that.” 

“ Ah ! ” Mrs. Sparsit sighed and shuddered. 

“ No, ma’am,” continued Bounderby, “ I have not heard any- 
thing more about it. It’s in hand, though ; and young Tom, 
who rather sticks to business at present — something new for 
him ; he hadn’t the schooling / had — is helping. My injunction 
is, Keep it quiet, and let it seem to blow over. Do what you 
like under the rose, but don’t give a sign of what you’re about ; 
or half a hundred of ’em will combine together and get this 
fellow who has bolted, out of reach for good. Keep it quiet, 


J/A/?D TIMES, 


177 

and the thieves will grow in confidence by little and little, and 
we shall have ’em.” 

‘‘Very sagacious indeed, sir,” said Mrs. Sparsit. “ Very in- 
teresting. The old woman you mentioned, sir — ” 

“ The old woman I mentioned, ma’am,” said Bounderby, cut- 
ting the matter short, as it was nothing to boast about, “ is not 
laid hold of ; but she may take her oath she will be, if that 
is any satisfaction to her villanous old mind. In the mean time, 
ma’am, I am of opinion, if you ask me my opinion, that the lest 
she is talked about, the better.” 

That same evening, Mrs. Sparsit, in her chamber window, 
resting from her packing operations, looked towards her great 
staircase and saw Louisa still descending. 

She sat by Mr. Harthouse, in an alcove in the garden, talking 
very low, he stood leaning over her, as they whispered together, 
and his face almost touched her hair. “ If not quite ! ” said 
Mrs. Sparsit, straining her hawk’s eyes to the utmost. Mrs. 
Sparsit was too distant to hear a word of their discourse, or 
even to know that they were speaking softly, otherwise than 
from the expression of their figures ; but what they said was 
tliis : 

“ You recollect the man, Mr. Harthouse ? ” 

“ Oh, perfectly ! ” 

“ His fiice, and his manner, and what he said ?” 

Perfectly. And an infinitely dreary person he appeared to 
me to be. Lengthy and prosy in the extreme. It was knowing 
to hold forth, in the humble-virtue school of eloquence ; but, I 
assure you I thought at the time, ‘ My good fellow, you are 
over-doing this ! ’ ” 

“ It has been very difficult to me to think ill of that man.” 

“ My dear Louisa — as Tom says.” Which he never did say. 
“You know no good of the fellow?” 

“ No, certainly.” 

“ Nor of any other such person ? ” 

“ How can I,” she returned, with more of her first manner 
on her than he had lately seen, “ when I know nothing of 
them, men or women ? ” 

“My dear Louisa, then consent to receive the submissive 
representation of your devoted friend, who knows something of 
several varieties of his excellent fellow-creatures — for excellent 
they are, I am quite ready to believe, in spite of such little 
foibles as always helping themselves to what they can get hold 
of. This fellow talks. Well ; every felldw talks. He pro- 
fesses morality. Well ; all sorts of humbugs profess morality. 


I/AA!I} TIMES. 


178 

From the House of Commons to the House of Correction, 
there is a general profession of morality, except among our peo- 
ple ; it really is that exception which makes our people quite 
reviving. You saw and heard the case. Here was one of the 
fluffy classes pulled up extremely short by my esteemed friend 
Mr. Bounderby — who, as we know, is not possessed of that del- 
icacy which would soften so tight a hand. The member of the 
fluffy classes was injured, exasperated, left the house grumbling, 
met somebody who proposed to him to go in for some share in 
this Bank business, went in, put something in his pocket which 
had nothing in it before, and relieved his mind extremely. 
Really he would have been an uncommon, instead of a common, 
fellow, if he had not availed himself of such an opportunity. 
Or he may have originated it altogether, if he had the clever- 
ness.” 

“I almost feel as though it must be bad in me,” returned 
Louisa, after sitting thoug’htful awhile, “ to be so ready to agree 
with you, and to be so lightened in my heart by what you say.” 

‘T only say what is reasonable ; nothing worse. I have 
talked it over with my friend Tom more than once — of course 
I remain on terms of perfect confidence with Tom — and he 
is quite of my opinion, and I am quite of his. Will you 
walk ? ” 

They strolled away, atnong the lanes beginning to be indis- 
tinct in the twilight — she leaning on his arm — and she little 
thought how she was going down, down, down, Mrs. Sparsit’s 
staircase. 

Night and day, Mrs. Sparsit kept it standing. When Louisa 
had arrived at the bottom and disappeared in the gulf, it might 
fall in upon her if it would ; but, until then, there it was to be 
a Building, before Mrs. Sparsit’ s eyes. And there Louisa al- 
ways was, upon it. And always gliding down, down, down ! 

Mrs. Sparsit saw James Harthouse come and go ; she heard 
of him here and there ; she saw the changes of the face he had 
studied ; she, too, remarked to a nicety how and when it 
clouded, how and when it cleared ; she kept her black eyes 
wide open, with no touch of pity, with no touch of compunc- 
tion, all absorbed in interest. In the interest of seeing her, 
ever drawing, with no hand to stay her, nearer and nearer to 
the bottom of this new Giant’s Staircase. 

With all her deference for Mr. Bounderby as contradistin- 
guished from his portrait, Mrs. Sparsit had not the smallest in- 
tention of interrupting the descent. Eager to see it accom- 
plished, and yet patient, she waited for the last fall, as for the 


HARD TIMES. 


179 - 

ripeness and fulness of the harvest of her hopes. Hushed in 
expectancy, she kept her wary gaze upon the stairs ; and seldom 
so much as darkly shook her right mitten (with her fist in it), at 
the figure coming down. 


CHAPTER XI. 

Lower and Lower. 

figure descended the great stairs steadily, steadily ; 
always verging, like a weight in deep water, to the 
black gulf at the bottom. 

Mr. Gradgrind, apprised of his wife’s decease, made 
an expedition from London, and buried her in a business-like 
manner. He then returned with promptitude to the national 
cinder-heap, and resumed his sifting for the odds and ends he 
wanted, and his throwing of the dust about into the eyes of 
other people who wanted other odds and ends — in fact resumed 
his parliamentary duties. 

In the mean time, Mrs. Sparsit kept unwinking watch and ward. 
Separated from her staircase, all the week, by the length of iron 
road dividing Coketown from the country-house, she yet main- 
tained her cat-like observation of Louisa, through her husband, 
through her brother, through James Harthouse, through the out- 
sides of letters and packets, through everything animate and in- 
animate that at any time went near the stairs. “ Your foot is on 
the last step, my lady,” said Mrs. Sparsit, apostrophising the 
descending figure, with the aid of her threatening mitten, “ and 
all your art shall never blind me.” 

Art or nature though, the original stock of Louisa’s character 
or the graft of circumstances upon it, — her curious reserve did 
baffle, while it stimulated, one as sagacious as Mrs. Sparsit. 
There were times when Mr. James Harthouse was not sure of 
her. There were times when he could not read the face he had 
studied so long ; and when this lonely girl was a greater mystery 
to him, than any woman of the world with a ring of satellites to 
help her. 

So the time went on ; until it happened that Mr. Bounderby was 
called away from home by business which required his presence 
elsewhere, for three or four days. It was on a Friday that he 
intimated this to Mrs. Sparsit at the Bank, adding : “ But you’ll 



i8o 


HARD TIMES. 


go down to-morrow, ma’am, all the same. ' You’ll go down 
just as if I was there. It will make no difference to you.” 

“ Pray, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, reproachfully, let me 
beg you not to say that. Your absence will make a vast differ- 
ence to me, sir, as I think you very well know.” 

“ Well, ma’am, then you must get on in my absence as well 
as you can,” said Bounderby, not displeased. 

“ Mr. Bounderby,” retorted Mrs. Sparsit, “ your will is to me 
a law, sir ; otherwise, it might be my inclination to dispute 
your kind commands, not feeling sure that it will be quite so 
agreeable to Miss Gradgrind to receive me, as it ever is to your 
own munificent hospitality. But you shall say no more, sir. I 
will go, upon your invitation.” 

“ Why, when I invite you to my house, ma’am,” said Bound- 
erby, opening his eyes, “ I should hope you want no other in- 
vitation.” 

“ No, indeed, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, “ I should hope 
not. Say no more, sir. I would, sir, I could see you gay 
again.” 

“ What do you mean, ma’am ? ” blustered Bounderby. 

“ Sir,” rejoined Mrs. Sparsit, “ there was wont to be an elas- 
ticity in you which I sadly miss. Be buoyant, sir ! ” 

Mr. Bounderby, under the influence of this difficult adjura- 
tion, backed up by her compassionate eye, could only scratch 
his head in a feeble and ridiculous manner, and afterwards as- 
sert himself at a distance, by being heard to bully the small fry 
of business all the morning. 

“ Bitzer,” said Mrs. Sparsit that afternoon, when her patron 
was gone on his journey, and the Bank was closing, “ present 
my compliments to young Mr. Thomas, and ask him if he 
would step up and partake of a lamb chop and walnut ketchup, 
with a glass of India ale? ” Young Mr. Thomas being usu- 
ally ready for anything in that way, returned a gracious answer, 
and followed on its heels. “ Mr. Thomas,” said Mrs. Sparsit, 
“these plain viands being on table, I thought you might be 
tempted.” “ Thank’ee, Mrs. Sparsit,” said the whelp. And 
gloomily fell to. 

“ How is Mr. Harthouse, Mr. Tom ? ” asked Mrs. Sparsit. 

“ Oh, he’s all right,” said Tom. 

“ Where may he be at present ? ” Mrs. Sparsit asked in a light 
conversational manner, after mentally devoting the whelp to the 
Furies for being so uncommunicative. 

“He is shooting in Yorkshire,” said Tom. “Sent Loo a 
basket half as big as a church, yesterday.” 


HAT^D TIMES. 


I8l 


'“The kind of gentleman, now,” said Mrs. Sparsit, sweetly, 
“whom one might wager to be a good shot ! ” 

“ Crack,” said Tom. 

He had long been a down-looking young fellow, but this 
characteristic had so increased of late, that he never raised his 
eyes to any face for three seconds together. Mrs. Sparsit con- 
sequently had ample means of watching his looks, if she were so 
inclined. 

“ Mr. Harthouse is a great favourite of mine,” said Mrs. 
Sparsit, “ as indeed he is of most people. May we expect to 
see him again shortly, Mr. Tom ? ” 

“Why, /expect to see him to-morrow,” returned the whelp. 

“ Good news ! ” cried Mrs. Sparsit, blandly. 

“ I have got an appointment with him to meet him in the 
evening at the station here,” said Tom, “and I am going to 
dine with him afterwards, 1 believe. He is not coming down 
to the country house for a week or so, being due somewhere 
else. At least, he says so ; but I shouldn’t wonder if he was 
to stop here over Sunday, and stray that way.” 

“ Which reminds me ! ” said Mrs. Sparsit. “ Would you re- 
member a message to your sister, Mr. Tom, if I was to charge 
you with one ? ” 

“ Well ? I’ll try,” returned the reluctant whelp, “ if it isn’t a 
long un.” 

“ It is merely my respectful compliments,” said Mrs. Sparsit, 
“ and I fear I may not trouble her with my society this week ; 
being still a little nervous, and better perhaps by my poor self.” 

“ Oh ! if that’s all,” observed Tom, “ it wouldn’t much mat- 
ter, even if I was to forget it, for Loo’s not likely to think of 
you unless she sees you.” 

Having paid for his entertainment with this agreeable com- 
pliment, he relapsed into a hangdog silence until there was no 
more India ale left, when he said, “ Well, Mrs. Sparsit, I must 
be off! ” and went off. 

Next day, Saturday, Mrs. Sparsit sat at her window all day 
long ; looking at the customers coming in and out, watching 
the postman, keeping an eye on the general traffic of the street, 
revolving many things in her mind, but, above all, keeping her 
attention on her staircase. The evening came, she put on her 
bonnet and shawl, and went quietly out : having her reasons for 
hovering in a furtive way about the station by which a passen- 
ger would arrive from Yorkshire, and for preferring to peep into 
it round pillars and corners, and out of ladies’ waiting-room 
windows, to appearing in its precincts openly. 


182 


HARD TIMES, 


Toil) was in attendance, and loitered about until the expected 
train came in. It brought no Mr. Harthouse. Torn waited 
until the crowd had dispersed, and the bustle was over ; and 
then referred to a posted list of trains, and took counsel with 
porters. That done, he strolled away idly, stopping in the 
street and looking up it and down it, and liMng his hat off and 
and putting it on again, and yawning and stretching himself, and 
exhibiting all the symptoms of mortal weariness to be expected 
in one who had still to wait until the next train should come in, 
an hour and forty minutes hence. 

“ This is a device to keep him out of the way,” said Mrs. 
Sparsit, starting from the dull office window whence she had 
watched him last. “ Harthouse is with his sister now ! ” 

It was the conception of an inspired moment, and she shot 
off with her utmost swiftness to work it out. The station for 
the country house was at the opposite end of the town, the time 
was short, the road not easy ; but she was so quick on pounc- 
ing on a disengaged coach, so quick in darting out of it, pro- 
diTcing her money, seizing her ticket, and diving into the train, 
that she was borne along the arches spanning the land of coal- 
pits past and present, as if she had been caught up in a cloud 
and whirled away. 

All the journey, immovable in the air though never left be- 
hind ; plain to the dark eyes of her mind, as the electric wires 
which ruled a colossal strip of music paper out of the evening 
sky, was plain to the dark eyes of her body ; Mrs. Sparsit saw 
her staircase with the figure coming down. Very near the 
bottom now. Upon the brink of the abyss. 

An overcast September evening, just at nightfall, saw be- 
neath its drooping eyelid Mrs. Sparsit glide out of her carriage, 
pass down the wooden steps of the little station into a stony 
road, cross it into a green lane, and become hidden in a sum- 
mer-growth of leaves and branches. One or two late birds 
sleepily chirping in their nests, and a bat heavily ci-ossing and 
recrossing her, and the reek of her own tread in the thick dust 
that felt like velvet, were all Mi*s. Sparsit heard or saw until she 
very softly closed a gate. 

She went up to the house, keeping within the shrubbery, and 
went round it, peeping between the leaves at the lower win- 
dows. Most of them were ojDen, as they usually were in such 
warm weather, but there were no lights yet, and all was silent. 
She tried the garden with no better effect. She thought of the 
wood, and stole towards it, heedless of long grass and briers : 
of worms, snails, and slugs, and all the creeping things that be.* 


TIMES. 


183 


With her dark eyes and her hook nose warily in advance of 
her, Mrs. Sparsit softly crushed her way through the thick 
undergrowth, so intent upon her object that she probably 
would have done no less, if the wood had been a wood of ad- 
ders. 

Hark ! 

The smaller birds might have tumbled out of their nests, fas- 
cinated by the glittering of Mrs. Sparsit’ s eyes in the gloom, as 
she stopped and listened. 

Low voices close at hand. His voice and hers. The ap- 
pointment was a device to keep the brother away ! There 
they were yonder, by the felled tree. 

Bending low among the dewy grass, Mrs. Sparsit advanced 
closer to them. She drew herself up, and stood behind a tree, 
like Robinson Crusoe in his ambuscade against the savages ; so 
near to them that at a spring, and that no great one, she 
could have touched them both. He was there secretly, and 
had not shown himself at the house. He had come on horse- 
back, and must have passed through the neighbouring fields, for 
his horse was tied to the meadow side of the fence, within a few 
paces. 

“ My dearest love,” said he, “ what could I do ? Knowing 
you were alone, was it possible that I could stay away ? ” 

“ You may hang your head, to make yourself the more at- 
tractive ; /don’t know what they see in you when you hold it 
up,” thought xVIrs. Sparsit, “but you little think, my dearest 
love, whose eyes are on you ! ” 

That she hung her head was certain. She urged him to go 
away, she commanded him to go away ; but she neither turned 
her face to him, nor raised it. Yet it was remarkable that she 
sat as still as ever the amiable woman in ambuscade had seen 
her sit, at any period in her life. Her hands rested in one 
another, like the hands of a statue ; and even her manner of 
speaking was not hurried. 

“My dear child,” said Harthouse; Mrs. Sparsit saw with 
delight that his arm embraced her ; “ will you not bear with my 
society for a little while ? ” 

“ Not here.” 

“ Where, Louisa ? ” 

“ Not here.” 

“ But we have so little time to make so much of, and I have 
come 'SO far, and am altogether so devoted and distracted. 
There never was a slave at once so devoted and ill-used by his 
mistress. To look for your sunny welcome that has warmed 


HARD TIMES. 


184 

me into life, and to be received in your frozen manner, is heart- 
rending.” 

“ Am I to say again, that I must be left to myself here ? ” 

“ But we must meet, my dear Louisa. Where shall we meet ? ” 

They both started. The listener started, guiltily, too ; for 
'she thought there was another listener among the trees. It was 
only rain, beginning to fall fast, in heavy drops. 

“Shall I ride up to the house a few minutes hence, inno- 
cently supposing that its master is at home and will be charmed 
to receive me ? ” 

“No!” 

“ Your cruel commands are implicitly to be obeyed ; though 
I am the most unfortunate fellow in the world, I believe, to have 
been insensible to all other women, and to have fallen prostrate 
at last under the foot of the most beautiful, and the most engag- 
ing, and the most imperious. My dearest Louisa, I cannot go 
myself, or let you go, in this hard abuse of your power.” 

Mrs. Spasit saw him detain her with his encircling arm, and 
heard him then and there, within her (Mrs. Sparsit’s) greedy 
hearing, tell her how he loved her, and how she was the stake 
for which he ardently desired to play away all that he had in 
life. The objects he had lately pursued, turned worthless 
beside her ; such success as was almost in his grasp, he Hung 
away from him like the dirt it was, compared with her. Its 
pursuit, nevertheless, if it kept him near her, or its renunciation 
if it took him from her, or flight if she shared it, or secrecy if she 
commanded it, or any fate, or every fate, all was alike to him, 
so that she was true to him, — the man who had seen how cast 
away she was, whom she had inspired at their first meeting with 
an admiration, an interest, of which he had thought himself 
incapable, whom she had received into her confidence, who was 
devoted to her and adored her. All this, and more, in his 
hurry, and in hers, in the whirl of her own gratified malice, in 
the dread of being discovered, in the rapidly increasing noise of 
heavy rain among the leaves, and a thunder-storm rolling up — 
Mrs. Sparsit received into her mind, set off with such an una- 
voidable halo of confusion and indistinctness, that when at 
length he climbed the fence and led his horse away, she was 
not sure where they were to meet, or when, except that they had 
said it was to be that night. 

But one of them yet remained in the darkness before her ; 
and while she tracked that one she must be right. “ Oh, my 
dearest love,” thought Mrs. Sparsit, “ you little think how well 
attended you are 1 ” 


JIA/^D TIMES. 


185 

Mrs. Sparsit saw her out of the wood, and saw her enter the 
house. What to do next? It rained now, in a sheet of water. 
Mrs. Sparsit’ s white stockings were of many colours, green pre- 
dominating ; prickly things were in her shoes ; caterpillars slung 
themselves, in hammocks of their own making, from various 
parts of her dress ; rills ran from her bonnet, and her Roman 
nose. In such condition, Mrs. Sparsit stood hidden in the dens- 
ity of the shrubbery, considering what next ? 

Lo, Louisa coming out of the house ! Hastily cloaked and 
muffled, and stealing away. She elopes ! She falls from the 
lowermost stair, and is swallowed up in the gulf ! 

Indifferent to the rain, and moving with a quick determined 
step, she struck into a side-path parallel with the ride. Mrs. 
Sparsit followed in the shadow of the trees, at but a short dis- 
tance ; for it was not easy to keep a figure in view going quickly 
through the umbrageous darkness. 

When she stopped to close the side-gate without noise, Mrs. 
Sparsit stopped. When she went on, Mrs. Sparsit went on. 
She went by the way Mrs. Sparsit had come, emerged from the 
green lane, crossed the stony road, and ascended the wooden 
steps to the railroad. A train for Coketown would come through 
presently, Mrs. Sparsit knew ; so she understood Coketown to 
be her first place of destination. 

In Mrs. Sparsit’s limp and streaming state, no extensive pre- 
cautions were necessary to change her usual appearance ; but, 
she stopped under the lee of the station wall, tumbled her shawl 
into a new shape, and put it on over her bonnet. So disguised, 
she had no fear of being recognised when she followed up the 
railroad steps, and paid her money in the small office. Louisa 
sat waiting in a corner. Mrs. Sparsit sat waiting in another 
corner. Both listened to the thunder, which was loud, and to 
the rain, as it washed off the roof, and pattered on the parapets 
of the arches. Two or three lamps were rained out and blown 
out ; so, both saw the lightning to advantage as it quivered and 
zig-zagged on the iron tracks. 

The seizure of the station with a fit of trembling, gradually 
deepening to a complaint of the heart, announced the train. 
Fire and steam, and smoke, and red light ; a hiss, a crash, a 
bell, and a shriek ; I^ouisa put into one carriage, Mrs. Spar- 
sit put into another : the little station a desert speck in the 
thunder-storm. 

Though her teeth chattered in her head from wet and^ cold, 
Mrs. Sparsit exulted hugely. The figure had plunged down the 
precipice, and she felt herself, as it were, attending on the body. 


J/AJ^D TIMES. 


1 86 

Could she, who had been so active in the getting up of the 
funeral triumph, do less than exult ? “ She will be at Coketown 

long before him,” thought Mrs. Sparsit, “ though his horse is 
never so good. Where will she wait for him ? And where will 
they go together ? Patience. We shall see.” 

The tremendous rain occasioned infinite confusion, when the 
train stopped at its destination. Gutters and pipes had burst, 
drains had overflowed, and streets were under water. In the 
first instant of alighting, Mrs. Sparsit turned her distracted eyes 
towards the waiting coaches, which were in great request. 
“ She will get into one,” she considered, “ and will be away 
before I can follow in another. At all risks of being run over, 
I must see the number, and hear the order given to the coach- 
man.” 

But, Mrs. Sparsit was wrong in her calculation. Louisa got 
into no coach, and was already gone. The black eyes kept 
upon the railroad -carriage in which she had travelled, settled 
upon it a moment too late. The door not being opened after 
several minutes, Mrs. Sparsit passed it and repassed it, saw 
nothing, looked in, and found it empty. Wet through and 
through : with her feet squelching and squashing in her shoes 
whenever she moved ; with a rash of rain upon her classical 
visage ; with a bonnet like an over-ripe fig ; with all her clothes 
spoiled : with damp impressions of every button, string, and 
hook-and-eye she wore, printed off upon herdiighly connected 
back ; with a stagnant verdure on her general exterior, such as 
accumulates on an old park fence in a mouldy lane ; Mrs. 
Sparsit had no resource but to burst into tears of bitterness and 
say, “ I have lost her ! ” 


CHAPTER XII. 

Dorvn. 

S HE national dustmen, after entertaining one another 
with a great many noisy little fights among themselves, 
had dispersed for the present, and Mr. Gradgrind was 
at home for the vacation. 

He sat writing in the room with the deadly statistical clock, 
proving something no doubt— i)robably, in the main, that the 
Good Samaritan was a Bad Economist. The noise of the rain 


HARD TIMES. 


187 

did not disturb him much ; but it attracted his attention suffi- 
ciently to make him raise his head sometimes, as if he were 
rather remonstrating with the elements. AVhen it thundered 
very loudly, he glanced towards Coketown, having it in his 
mind that some of the tall chimneys might be struck by 
lightning. 

The thunder was rolling into distance, and the rain was pour- 
ing down like a deluge, when the door of his room opened. 
He looked round the lamp upon his table, and saw, with 
amazement, his eldest daughter. 

“ Louisa ! ” 

Father, I want to speak to you.” 

“ What is the matter ? How strange you look ! And good 
Heaven,” said Mr. Gradgrind, wondering more and more, 
“ have you come here exposed to this storm ? ” 

She put her hands to her dress, as if she hardly knew. 

“ Yes.” Then she uncovered her head, and letting her cloak 
and hood fall where they might, stood looking at him ; so colour- 
less, so dishevelled, so defiant and despairing, that he was afraid 
of her. 

“What is it? I conjure you, Louisa, tell me what is the 
matter.” 

She droppped into a chair before him, and put her cold hand 
on his arm. 

“ Father, you have trained me from my cradle ? ” 

“Yes, Louisa.” 

“ I curse the hour in which I was born to such a destiny.” 

He looked at her in doubt and dread, vacantly repeating : 

Curse the hour ? Curse the hour ? ” 

“ How could you give me life, and take from me all the in- 
a])preciable things that raise it from the state of conscious 
death? Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the 
sentiments of my heart ? What have you done, O father, what 
have you done, with the garden that should have bloomed 
once, in this great wilderness here ! ” 

She struck herself with both her hands upon her bosom. 

“ If it had ever been here, its ashes alone would save me 
from the void in which my whole life sinks. I did not mean to 
say this ; but, father, you remember the last time we conversed 
in this room ? ” 

He had been so wholly unprepared for what he heard now, 
that it was with difficulty he answered, “Yes, Louisa.” 

“ What has risen to my lips now, would have risen to my 
lips then, if you had given me a moment’s help. I don’t re- 


HARD TIMES. 


I88., 

proach you, father. What you have never nurtured in me, you 
have never nurtured in yourself ; but O ! if you had only done 
so long ago, or if you had only neglected me, what a much 
better and much happier creature I should have been this 
day ! ” 

On hearing this, after all his care, he bowed his head upon 
his hand and groaned aloud. 

“ Father, if you had known, when we were last together here, 
what even I feared while I strove against it — as it has been my 
task from infancy to strive against every natural prompting that 
has arisen in my heart ; if you had known that there lingered in 
my breast, sensibilities, affections, weaknesses capable of being 
cherished into strength, defying all the calculations ever made 
by man, and no more known to his arithmetic than his Creator 
is, — would you have given me to the husband whom I am now 
sure that I hate ? ” 

He said, “ No. No, my poor child.” 

“ Would you have doomed me, at any time, to the frost and 
blight that have hardened and spoiled me? Would you have 
robbed me — for one’s enrichment — only for the greater desola- 
tion of this world — of the immaterial j)art of my life, the spring 
and summer of my belief, my refuge from what is sordid and 
bad in the real things around me, my school in which I should 
have learned to be more humble and more trusting with them, 
and to hope in my little sphere to make them better ? ” 

“ O no, no. No, Louisa.” 

“Yet, father, if I had been stone blind ; if I had groped my 
way by my sense of touch, and had been free, while I knew the 
shapes and surfaces of things, to exercise my fancy somewhat, 
in regard to them ; I should have been a million times wiser, 
happier, more loving, more contented, more innocent and 
human in all good respects, than I am with the eyes I have. 
Now, hear what I have come to say.” 

He moved, to suj)i:)ort her with his arm. She rising as he 
did so, they stood close together : she, with a hand upon his 
' shoulder, looking fixedly in his face. 

“With a hunger and thirst upon me, father, which have 
never been for a moment appeased ; with an ardent impulse 
towards some region where rules, and figures, and definitions 
were not quite absolute ; I have grown up, battling every inch 
of my way.” 

“ I never knew you were unhappy, my child.” 

“ Father, I always knew it. In this strife 1 have almost re- 
pulsed and crushed my better angel into a demon. What I 


//A/^D TIMES. 


189 


have learned has left me doubting, misbelieving, despising, re- 
gretting, what I have not learned ; and my dismal resource has 
been to think that life would soon go by, and that nothing in it 
could be worth the pain and trouble of a contest.” 

“And you so young, Louisa ! ” he said with pity. 

“ And I so young. In this condition, father — for I show you 
now, without fear or favour, the ordinary deadened state of my 
mind as I know it — you proposed my husband to me. I took 
him. I never made a pretence to him or you that I loved him. 
I knew, and, father, you knew, and he knew, that I never did. 
I was not wholly indifferent, for I had a hope of being pleasant 
and useful to Tom. I made that wild escape into something 
visionary, and have slowly found out how wild it was. But Tom 
had been the subject of all the little tenderness of my life ; per- 
haps he became so because I knew so well how to pity him. 
It matters little now, except as it may dispose you to think 
more leniently of his errors.” 

As her father held her in his arms, she put her other hand 
upon his other shoulder, and still looking fixedly in his face 
went on. 

“ When I was irrevocably married, there rose up into rebellion 
against the tie, the old strife, made fiercer by all those causes 
of disparity which arise out of our two individual natures, and 
which no general laws shall ever rule or state for me, father, 
until they shall be able to direct the anatomist where to strike 
his knife into the secrets of my soul.” 

“Louisa!” he said, and said imploringly; for he well re- 
membered what had passed between them in their former inter- 
view. 

“ I do not reproach you, father ; I make no complaint. I 
am here with another object.” 

“ What can I do, child ? Ask me what you will.” 

“ I am coming to it. Father, chance then threw into my way 
a new acquaintance ; a man such as I had had no experience 
of ; used to the world ; light, polished, easy ; making no pre- 
tences ; avowing the low estimate of everything, that I was half 
afraid to form in secret ; conveying to me almost immediately, 
though I don’t know how or by what degrees, that he under- 
stood me, and read my thoughts. I could not find that he was 
worse than I. There seemed to be a near affinity between us. 
I only wondered it should be worth his while, who cared for 
nothing else, to care so much for me.” 

“ For you, Louisa ? ” 

Her father might instinctively have loosened his hold, but 


igo . 


IIA/^D TIMES. 




that he felt her strength departing from her, and saw a wild di- 
lating fire in the eyes steadfastly regarding him. 

“ I say nothing of his plea for claiming my confidence. It 
matters very little how he gained it. Father, he did gain it. 
What you know of the story of my marriage, he soon knew, 
just as well.” 

Her father’s face was ashy white, and he held her in both his 
arms. 

‘H have done no worse; I have not disgraced you. But if 
you ask me whether I have loved him, or do love him, I tell you 
plainly, father, that it may be so. I don’t know ! ” 

She took her hands suddenly from his shoulders and pressed 
them both upon her side ; while in her face, not like itself — 
and in her figure, drawn up, resolute to finish by a last effort 
what she had to say — the feelings long suppressed broke loose. 

“ This night, my husband being away, he has been with me, 
declaring himself my lover. This minute he expects me, for I 
could release myself of his presence by no other means. I do 
not know that I am sorry, I do not know that 1 am ashamed, I 
do not know that I am degraded in my own esteem. All that 
I know is, your philosophy and your teaching will not save me. 
Now, father, you have brought me to this. Save me by some 
other means ! ” 

He tightened his hold in time to prevent her sinking on the 
floor, but she cried out in a terrible voice, ‘T shall die if you 
hold me ! Let me fall upon the ground ! ” And he laid her 
down there, and saw the pride of his heart and the triumph of 
his system, lying, an insensible heap, at his feet. 


END OF THE SECOND BOOK. 


//A/^D TIAIES. 


95 


and she rested. As she softened with the quiet, and the con- 
sciousness of being so watched, some tears made their way in- 
to her eyes. The face touched hers, and she knew that there 
were tears upon it too, and she the cause cf them. 

As Louisa feigned to rouse herself, and sat up. Sissy retired, 
so that she stood placidly near the bed-side. 

“ 1 hope 1 have not disturbed you. I have come to ask if 
you would let me stay with you.” 

“ Why should you stay with me ? My sister will miss you. 
You are everything to her.” 

“Am 1 ? ” returned Sissy, shaking her head. “ I would be 
something to you, if I might.” 

“ What?” said Louisa, almost sternly. 

“ Whatever you want most, if I could be that. At all events, 
1 would like to try to be as near it as I can. And however far 
off that may be, I will never tire of trying. Will you let 
me ? ” 

“ My father sent you to ask me.” 

“No indeed,” replied Sissy. “ He told me that I might come 
in now, but he sent me away from the room this morning — or 
at least — ” She hesitated and stopped. 

“ At least, what ?” said Louisa, with her searching eyes up- 
on her. 

“ 1 thought it best myself that I should be sent away, for I 
felt very uncertain whether you would like to find me here.” 

“ Have I always hated you so much ?” 

“ I hope not, for 1 have always loved you, and have always 
wished that you should know it. But you changed to me a little, 
shortly before you left home. Not that I wondered at it. You 
knew so much, and 1 knew so little, and it was so natural in 
many ways, going as you were among many friends, that I had 
nothing to complain of, and was not at all hurt.” 

Her colour rose as she said it modestly and hurriedly. Louisa 
understood the loving pretence, and her heart smote her. 

“ May I try ? ” said Sissy, emboldened to raise her hand to 
the neck Lhat was insensibly drooping towards her. 

Louisa, taking down the hand that would have' embraced her 
in another moment, held it in one of hers, and answered : 

“ First, Sissy, do you know what I am ? I am so proud and 
so hardened, so confused and troubled, so resentful and unjust 
to every one and to myself, that everything is stormy, dark, and 
wicked to me. Does not that repel you ? ” 

“No !” 

“ I am so unhappy, and all that should have made me other- 


TIMES. 


196 

wise is so laid waste, that if I had been bereft of sense to this 
hour, and instead of being as learned as you think me, had to 
begin to acquire the simplest truths, I could not want a guide 
to peace, contentment, honour, all the good of which I am quite 
devoid, more abjectly than I do. Does not that repel you ? ” _ 

“ No ! ” 

In the innocence of her brave affection, and the brimming 
ui) of her. old devoted spirit, the once deserted girl shone like a 
beautiful light upon the darkness of the other. 

Louisa raised the hand that it might clasp her neck and join 
its fellow there. She fell upon her knees, and clinging to this 
stroller’s child looked up at her almost with veneration. 

“ Forgive me, pity me, help me ! Have compassion on my 
great need, and let me lay this head of mine upon a loving 
heart ? ” 

“O lay it here ! ” cried Sissy. “ Lay it here, my dear.” 


CHAPTER H. 

• Fiery Ridiculous. 

R. JAMES HARTHOUSE passed a whole night and a 
day in a state of so much hurry, that the World, with 
its best glass in its eye, would scarcely have recog- 
nised him during that insane interval, as the brother 
Jem of the honourable and jocular member. He was positively 
agitated. He several times spoke with an emphasis similar to 
the vulgar manner. He went in and went out in an unaccount- 
able way, like a man without an object. He rode like a high- 
wayman. In a word, he was so horribly bored by existing cir- 
cumstances, that he forgot to go in for boredom in the man- 
ner prescribed by the authorities. 

After putting his horse at Coketown through the storm as if it 
were a leap, he waited up all night : from time to time ringing 
his bell with the greatest fury, charging the porter who kept 
watch with delinquency in withholding letters or messages that 
could not fail to have been entrusted to him, and demanding 
restitution on the spot. The dawn coming, the morning com- 
ing, and the day coming, and neither message nor letter coming 
with either, he went down to the country-house. There the re- 
port, was, Mr. Bounderby away and Mrs. Bounderby in town. 



TIMES. 


1 97 


Left for town suddenly last' evening. Not even known to be 
gone until receipt of message importing that her return was not 
to be expected for the present. 

In these circumstances he had nothing for it but to follow her 
to town. He went to the house in town. Mrs. Bounderbynot 
there. He looked in at the Bank. Mr. Bounderby away, and 
Mrs. Sparsit away. Mrs. Sparsitaway? Who could have been 
reduced to sudden extremity for the company of that griffin ! 

“ Well, I don’t know,” said Tom, who had his own reasons 
for being uneasy about it. “She was off somewhere at day- 
break this morning. She’s always full of mystery ; I hate her. 
So 1 do that white chap ; he’s always got his blinking eyes up- 
on a fellow.” 

“ Where were you last night, Tom ? ” 

“ Where was I last night ! ” said Tom. “ Come ! I like 
that. I was waiting for you, Mr. Harthouse, till it came down 
as I never saw it come down before. Where was I too ! . Where 
were you, you mean.” 

“ I was prevented from coming — detained.” 

Detained !” murmured Tom. “ Two of us were detained. 
I was detained looking for you, till I lost every train but the 
mail. It would have been a pleasant job to go down by that 
on such a night, and have to walk home through a pond. I 
was obliged to sleep in town after all.” . 

“ Where ? ” 

“ Where ? Why, in my own bed at Bounderby’ s.” 

“ Did you see your sister ? ” 

“ How the deuce,” returned Tom staring, could I see my 
sister when she was fifteen miles off? ” 

Cursing these quick retorts of the young gentleman to whom 
lie was so true a friend, Mr. Harthouse disembarrassed himself 
of that interview with the smallest conceivable amount of cer- 
emony and debated for the hundredth time what all this could 
mean ? He made only one thing clear. It was, that whether 
she was in town or out of town, whether he had been prema- 
ture with her who was so hard to comprehend, or she had lost 
courage, or they were discovered, or some mischance or mis- 
take, at present incomprehensible, had occurred, he must re- 
main to confront his fortune, whatever it was. The hotel where 
he was known to live when condemned to that region of black- 
ness, was the stake to which he was tied. As to all the rest — 
What will be, will be. 

“ So, whether I am waiting for a hostile- message, or an as- 
signation, or a penitent remonstrance, or an impromptu wrestle 


HARD TIMES, 


198 

with my friend Bounderby in the Lancashire manner — which 
would seem as likely as anything else in the present state of af- 
fairs — ril dine,” said Mr. James Harthouse. ‘‘Bounderby has 
the advantage in point of weight ; and if anything of a British 
nature is to come off between us, it may be as well to be in 
training.” 

Therefore he rang the bell, and tossing himself negligently 
on a sofa, ordered “ Some dinner at six — with a beefsteak in 
it,” and got through the intervening time as well as he could. 
That was not particularly well ; for he remained in the greatest 
perplexity, and, as the hours went on, and no kind of explana- 
tion offered itself, his perplexity augmented at compound inter- 
est. 

However, he took affairs as coolly as it was in human nature 
to do, and entertained himself with the facetious idea of the 
training more than once. “ It wouldn’t be bad,” he yawned at 
one time, “to give the waiter five shillings, and throw him.” 
At another time it occurred to him, “ Or a fellow of about 
thirteen or fourteen stone might be hired by the hour.” But 
these jests did not tell materially on the afternoon, or his sus- 
pense ; and sooth to say they both lagged fearfully. 

It was impossible, even before dinner, to avoid often walking 
about in the pattern of the carpet, looking out of the window, 
listening at the door for footsteps, and occasionally becoming 
rather hot when any steps approached that room. But, after 
dinner, when the day turned to twilight, and the twilight turned 
to night, and still no communication was made to him, it began 
to be as he expressed it, “ like the Holy Office and slow tor- 
ture.” However, still true to his conviction that indifference 
was the genuine high-breeding (the only conviction he had), he 
seized this crisis as the opportunity for ordering candles and a 
newspaper. 

He had been trying in vain, for half an hour, to read this 
newspaper, when the waiter appeared and said, at once myste- 
riously and apologetically : 

“ Beg your pardon, sir. You’re wanted, sir, if you please.” 

A general recollection that this w’as the kind of thing the Po- 
lice said to the swell mob, caused Mr. Harthouse to ask the 
waiter in return, with bristling indignation, what the Devil he- 
meant by “wanted” ? 

“ Beg your pardon, sir. Young lady outside, sir, wishes to 
see you.” 

“ Outside ? YTiere ? ” 

“ Outside this door, sir.” 


IIA/Cn TIMES. 


199 


Giving the waiter to the personage before-mentioned, as a 
blockhead duly qualified for that consignment, Mr. Harthouse 
hurried into the gallery. A young woman whom he had never 
seen stood there. Plainly dressed, very quiet, very pretty. 
As he conducted her into the room and placed a chair for her, 
he observed, by the light of the candles, that she was even pret- 
tier than he had at first believed. Her face was innocent and 
youthful, and its expression remarkably pleasant. She was not 
afraid of him, or in any way disconcerted ; she seemed to have 
her mind entirely pre-occupied with the occasion of her visit, 
and to have substituted that consideration for herself. 

“ I speak to Mr. Harthouse ? ” she said, when they were 
alone. 

“To Mr. Harthouse.” He added in his mind, “And you 
speak to him with the most confiding eyes I ever saw, and the 
most earnest voice (though so quiet) 1 ever heard.” 

“If 1 do not understand — and I do not, sir” — said Sissy, 
“ what your honour as a gentleman binds you to, in other mat- 
ter& : ” the blood really rose in his face as she began in these 
words : “ I am sure I may rely upon it to keep my visit secret, 
and to keep what I am going to say. I may rely upon it, if 
you will tell me I may so far trust — ” 

“ You may, I assure you.” 

“ I am young, as you see ; I am alone, as you see. In com- 
ing to you, sir, I have no advice or encouragement beyond my 
own hope.” 

He thought “ But that is very strong,” as he followed the mo- 
mentary upward glance of her eyes. He thought besides, 
“This is a very odd beginning. I don’t see where we are go- 
ing.” 

“ I think,” said Sissy, “ you have already guessed whom I 
left just now ? ” 

“ I have been in the greatest concern and uneasiness during 
the last four-and-twenty hours (which have appeared as many 
years),” he returned, “on a lady’s account. The hopes I have 
been encouraged to form that you came from that lady, do not 
deceive me, I trust.” 

“ I left her within an hour.” 

“At—?” 

“ At her father’s.” 

Mr. Harthouse’s face lengthened in spite of his coolness, and 
his perplexity increased. “ Then I certainly,” he thought, “ do 
not see where we are going.” 

“She hurried there last night. She arrived there in great 


200 


HARD TIxMES. 


agitation, and was insensible all through the night. I live at 
her father’s, and was with her. You may be sure, sir, you will 
never see her again as long as you live.” 

Mr. Harthouse drew a long breath ; and, if ever man found 
himself in the position of not knowing what to say, made the 
discovery beyond all question that he was so circumstanced. 
The child-like ingenuousness with which his visitor spoke, her 
modest fearlessness, her truthfulness which put all artifice aside, 
her entire forgetfulness of herself in her earnest quiet holding 
to the object with which she had come ; all this, together with 
her reliance on his easily given promise — which in itself shamed 
him — presented something in which he was so inexperienced, 
and against which he knew any of his usual weapons would 
fall so powerless ; that not a word could he rally to his relief. 

At last he said : 

“So startling an announcement, so confidently made, and by 
such lips, is really disconcerting in the last degree. May I be 
permitted to inquire, if you are charged to convey that infor- 
mation to me in those hopeless words, by the lady of whom we 
speak.” 

“ I have no charge from her.” 

“The drowning man catches at the straw. With no disre- 
spect for your judgment, and with no doubt of your sincerity, 
excuse my saying that I cling to the belief that there is yet 
hope that I am not condemned to perpetual exile from that 
lady’s presence.” 

“There is not the least hope. The first object of my com- 
ing here, sir, is to assure you that you must believe that there 
is no more hope of your ever speaking with her again, than 
there would be if she had died when she came home last 
night.” 

“Must believe? But if I can’t — or if I should, by infirmity 
of nature, be obstinate — and won’t — 

“ It is still true. There is no hope.” 

James Harthouse looked at her with an incredulous smile 
upon his lips ; but her mind looked over and beyond him, and 
the smile was quite thrqwn away. 

He bit his lip, and took- a little time for consideration. 

“ Well ! If it should unhappily appear,” he said, “ after due 
pains and duty on my part, that I am brought to a position so 
desolate as this banishment, I shall not become the lady’s per- 
secutor. But you said you had no commission from her? ” 

“I have only the commission of my love for her, and her 
love for me. I have no other trust, than that I have been with 


TIMES. 


201 


her since she came home, and that she has given me her con- 
fidence. I have no further trust, than that 1 know something 
of her character and her marriage. O Mr. Harthouse, I think 
you had that trust too ! ” 

He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have 
been — in that nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven 
would have lived if they had not been whistled away — by the 
fervour of this approach. 

“lam not a moral sort of fellow,” he said, “and I never 
make any pretensions to the character of a moral sort of fellow. 
I am as immoral as need be. At the same time, in bringing 
any distress upon the lady who is the subject of the present 
conversation, or in unfortunately compromising her in any way, 
or in committing myself by any expression of sentiments to- 
wards her, not perfectly reconcilable with — in fact with — the 
domestic hearth ; or in taking any advantage of her father’s 
being a machine, or of her brother’s being a whelp, or of her 
husband’s being a bear ; I beg to be allowed to assure you that 
I have had no particularly evil intentions, but have glided on 
from one step to another with a smoothness so perfectly dia- 
bolical, that 1 had not the slightest idea the catalogue was half 
so long unLl I began to turn it over. Whereas I find,” said 
Mr. James Harthouse, in conclusion, “ that it is really in several 
volumes.” 

Though he said all. this in his frivolous way, the way seemed, 
for that once, a conscious polishing of but an ugly surface. He 
was silent for a moment ; and then proceeded with a more 
self-possessed air, though with traces of vexation and disappoint- 
ment that would not be polished out. 

“After what has been just now represented to me, in a man- 
ner I find it impossible to doubt — I know of hardly any other 
source from which I could *have accepted it so readily — I feel 
bound to say to you, in whom the confidence you have men- 
tioned has been reposed, that I cannot refuse to contemplate 
the possibility (however unexpected) of my seeing the lady no 
more. 1 am solely to blame for the thing having come to this' 
— and — and, I cannot say,” he added, rather hard up for a 
general peroration, “ that I have any sanguine expectation of 
ever becoming a moral sort of fellow, or that I have any belief 
in any moral sort of fellow whatever.” 

Sissy’s face^ sufficiently showed that her appeal to him was 
not finished. 

“ You spoke,” he resumed, as she raisad her eyes to him 
9 * 


202 


TIMES. 


again, “of your first object. I may assume that there is a sec- 
ond to be mentioned ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Will you oblige me by confiding it ? ” 

“ Mr. Harthouse,” returned Sissy, with a blending of gentle- 
ness and steadiness that quite defeated him, and with a simple 
confidence in his being bound to do what she required, that 
held him at a singular disadvantage, “ the only reparation that 
remains with you, is to leave here immediately, and finally. I 
am quite sure that you can mitigate in no other way the wrong 
and harm you have done. I am quite sure that it is the only 
compensation you have left it in your power to make. I do 
not say that it is much, or that it is enough ; but it is something, 
and it is necessary. Therefore, though without any other au- 
lliority than I have given you, and even without the knowledge 
of any other person than yourself and myself, I ask you to de- 
part from this place to-night, under an obligation never to re- 
turn to it.” 

If she had asserted any influence over him beyond her plain 
faith in the truth and right of what she said ; if she had con- 
cealed the least doubt or irresolution, or had harboured for the 
best purpose any reserve or pretence ; if she had shown, or felt, 
the lightest trace of any sensitiveness to his ridicule or his 
astonishment, or any remonstrance he might offer ; he would 
have carried it against her at this point. But he could as easily 
have changed a clear sky by looking at it in surprise, as affect 
her. 

“ But do you know,” he asked, quite at a loss, “ the extent 
of what you ask ? You probably are not aware that I am here 
on a public kind of business, preposterous enough in itself, but 
which I have gone in for, and sworn by, and am supposed to 
be devoted to in quite a desperate manner? You probably 
are not aware of that, but I assure you it’s the fact.” 

It had no effect on Sjssy, fact or no fact. 

“ Besides which,” said Mr. Harthouse, taking a turn or two 
across the room, dubiously, “it’s so alarmingly absurd. It 
would make a man so ridiculous, after going in for these fellows, 
to back out in such an incomprehensible way.” 

“ I am quite sure,” repeated Sissy, “ that it is the only repa- 
ration in your power, sir. I am quite sure, or I would not have 
come here.” 

He glanced at her face, and walked about again. “Upon 
my soul, I don’t know wliat to say. So immensely absurd ! ” 

It fell to his lot, now, to stipulate for secrecy. 


HARD TIMES. 


203 


“ If I were to do such a very ridiculous thing,” he said, stop- 
ping again presently, and leaning against the chimney-piece, 

it could only be in the most inviolable confidence.” 

“ I will trust to you, sir,” returned Sissy, “ and you will trust 
to me.” 

His leaning against the chimney-piece reminded him of the 
night with the whelp. It was the self-same chimney-piece, and 
somehow he felt as if he were the whelp to-night. He could 
make no way at all. 

“ I suppose a man never was ])laced in a more ridiculous 
position,” he said, after looking down, and looking up, and 
laughing, and frowning, and walking off, and walking back again. 
“ But I see no way out of it. What will be, will be. This will 
be, I suppose. I must take off myself, I imagine — in short, I 
engage to do it.” 

■ Sissy rose. She was not surprised by the result, but she was 
happy in it, and her face beamed brightly. 

“ You will permit me to say,” continued Mr. James Harthouse, 
“ that I doubt if any other ambassador, or ambassadress, could 
have addressed me with the same success. I must not only re- 
gard myself as being in a very ridiculous position, but as being 
vanquished at all points. Will you allow me the privilege of 
remembering my enemy’s name ? ” 

“ My name ? ” said the ambassadress. 

“ The only name I could possibly care to know, to-night.” 

“ Sissy Jupe.” 

“ Pardon my curiosity at parting. Related to the family ? ” 

“ I am only a poor girl,” returned Sissy. “ I was separated 
from my father — he was only a stroller — and taken pity on by 
Mr. Gradgrind. I have lived in the house ever since.” 

She was gone. 

“ It wanted this to complete the defeat,” said Mr. James 
Harthouse, sinking, with a resigned air, on the sofa, after 
standing transfixed a little while. “ The defeat may now be 
considered perfectly accomplished. Only a poor girl — only a 
stroller — only James Harthouse made nothing of — only James 
Harthouse a Great Pyramid of failure.” 

The Great Pyramid put it into his head to go up the Nile. 
He took a pen upon the instant, and wrote the following note 
(in appropriate heiroglyphics) to his brother : 

Dear Jack. All up at Coketown. Bored out of the place, and going 
in for camels. Affectionately, Jem. 


204 


I/AJ?D TIMES, 


“ Send my fellow here.” 

“ Gone to bed, sir.” 

“ Tell him to get up, and pack up.” 

He wrote two more notes. One, to Mr. Bounderby, an- 
nouncing his retirement from that part of the country, and 
showing where he would be found for the next fortnight. The 
other, similar in effect, to Mr. Gradgrind. Almost as soon as 
the ink was dry upon their superscriptions, he had left the tall 
chimneys of Coketown behind, and was in a railway carriage, 
tearing and glaring over the dark landscape. 

The moral sort of fellows might suppose that Mr. James 
Harthouse derived some comfortable reflections afterwards, 
from this prompt retreat, as one of his few actions that made 
any amends for anything, and as a token to himself that he had 
escaped the climax of a very bad business. But it was not so, 
at all. A secret sense of having failed and been ridiculous 
— a dread of what other fellows who went in for similar 
sorts of things, would say at his expense if they knew it — so 
oppressed him, that what was about the very best passage in 
his life was the one of all others he would not have owned to 
on any account, and the only one that made him ashamed of 
himself. 


CHAPTER III. 

Very Decided, 

HE indefatigable Mrs. Sparsit, with a violent cold upon* 
her, her voice reduced to a whisper, and her stately 
frame so racked by continual sneezes that it seemed 
in danger of dismemberment, gave chase to her patron 
until she found him in the metropolis ; and there, majestically 
sweeping in upon him at his hotel in St. James’s Street, ex- 
ploded the combustibles with which she was charged, and 
blew up. Having executed her mission with infinite relish, 
this high-minded woman then fainted away on Mr. Bounderby’ s 
coat-collar. 

Mr. Bounderby’ s first procedure was to shake Mrs. Sparsit 
otf, and leave her to progress as she might through various • 
stages of suffering on the floor. He next had recourse to the 
administration of potent restoratives, such as screwing the 
patient’s thumbs, sraitting her hands, abundantly watering her 



HARD TIMES. 


205 


face, and inserting salt in her mouth. When these attentions 
had recovered her (which they speedily did), he hustled her 
into a fast train without offering any other refreshment, and 
carried her back to Coketown more dead than alive. 

Regarded as a classical ruin, Mrs. Sparsit was an interesting 
spectacle on her arrival at her journey’s end ; but considered in 
any other light, the amount of damage she had by that time 
sustained was excessive, and impaired her claims to admiration. 
Utterly heedless of the wear and tear of her clothes and con- 
stitution, and adamant to her pathetic sneezes, Mr. Bounderby 
immediately crammed her into a coach, and bore her off to 
Stone Lodge. 

“ Now, Tom Gradgrind,” said Bounderby, bursting into his 
father-in-law’s room late at night ; “ here’s a lady here — Mrs. 
Sparsit — you know Mrs. Sparsit — who has something to say to 
you that will strike you dumb.” 

“You have missed my letter ! ” exclaimed Mr. Gradgrind, 
surprised by the apparition. 

“ Missed your letter, sir ! ” bawled Bounderby. “The present 
time is no time for letters. No man shall talk to Josiah Boun- 
derby of Coketown about letters, with his mind in the state it’s 
in now.” 

“Bounderby,” said Mr. Gradgrind, in a tone of temperate re- 
monstrance, “ I speak of a very special letter I have written to 
you, in reference to Louisa.” 

“ Tom Gradgrind,” replied Bounderby, knocking the flat of 
his hand several times with great vehemence on the table, “ I 
speak of a very special messenger that has come to me, in 
reference to Louisa. Mrs. Sparsit ma’am, stand forward ! ” 

That unfortunate lady hereupon essaying to offer testimony, 
without any voice and with painful gestures expressive of an 
inflamed throat, became so aggravating and underwent so many 
facial contortions, that Mr. Boundery, unable to bear it, 
seized her by the arm and shook her. 

“If you can’t get it out, ma’am,” said Bounderby, “leave 
me to get it out. This is not a time for a lady, however 
highly connected, to be totally inaudible, and seemingly swal- 
lowing marbles. Tom Gradgrind, Mrs. Sparsit latterly found 
herself, by accident, in a situation to overhear a conversation 
out of doors between your daughter and your precious gentle- 
man-friend, Mr. James Harthouse.” 

“ Indeed ! ” said Mr. Gradgrind. 

“ Ah ! Indeed !” cried Bounderby. “And in that conver- 
sation — ” 


206 


H^IRD TIMES. 


“ It is not necessary to repeat its tenor, Boiinderby. I know 
what passed.” 

“ You do ? Perhaps,” said Boiinderby, staring with all his 
might at his so quiet and assuasive father-in-law, “ you know 
where your daughter is at the present time ? ” 

“ Undoubtedly. She is here.” 

“Here?” 

“ My dear Boiinderby, let me beg you to restrain these loud 
outbreaks, on all accounts. Louisa is here. The moment she 
could detach herself from that interview with the person of 
whom you speak, and whom I deeply regret to have been the 
means of introducing to you, Louisa hurried here, for protection. 
I myself had not been at home many hours, when I received 
her — here, in this room. She hurried by the train to town, 
she ran from town to this house through a raging storm, and 
presented herself before me in a state of distraction. Of course, 
she has remained here ever since. Let me entreat you, for your 
own sake and for hers, to be more quiet.” 

Mr. Boiinderby silently gazed about him for some moments, 
in every direction except Mrs. Sparsit’s direction ; and then, 
abruptly turning upon the niece of Lady Scadgers, said to that 
wretched woman : 

“ Now, ma’am ! We shall be happy to hear any little apol- 
ogy you may think proper to offer, for going about the country 
at express pace, with no other luggage than a Cock-and-a-Bull, 
ma’am ! ” 

“ Sir,” whispered Mrs. Sparsit, “ my nerves are at present too 
much shaken, and my health is at present too much impaired, 
ill your service, to admit of my doing more than taking refuge 
in tears.” 

(Which she did.) 

“ ^Vell, ma’am,” said Boiinderby, “ without making any ob- 
servation to you that may not be made with propriety to a 
woman of good family, what I have got to add to that, is that 
there is something else in which it appears to me you may take 
refuge, namely, a coach. And the coach in which we came 
here, being at the door, you’ll allow me to hand you down to 
it, and pack you home to the Bank : where the best course for 
you to pursue, will be to put your feet into the hottest water 
you can bear, and take a glass of scalding rum and butter after 
you get into bed.” With tliese words, Mr. Boiinderby extended 
his right hand to the weeping lady and escorted her to the con- 
-veyance in question, shedding many plaintive sneezes by the 
way. He soon returned alone. 


TIMES. 


207 


“ Now, as you showed me in your face, Tom Gradgrind, that 
you wanted to speak to me,” he resumed, “ here I am. But, 
I am not in a very agreeable state, I tell you plainly ; not 
relishing this business, even as it is, and not considering that I 
am at any time as dutifully and submissively treated by your 
daughter, as Josiah Bounderby of Coketown ought to be treated 
by his wife. You have your opinion, I dare say ; and I have 
mine, 1 know. If you mean to say anything to me to night, 
that goes against this candid remark, you had better let it 
alone.” 

iVIr. Gradgrind, it will be observed, being much softened, Mr. 
Bounderby took particular pains to harden himself at all points. 
It was his amiable nature. 

“ My dear Bounderby,” Mr. Gradgrind began in reply. 

“ Now, you’ll excuse me,” said Bounderby, “ but I don’t want 
to be too dear. That, to start with. When I begin to be dear 
to a man, 1 generally find that his intention is to come over me. 
I am not speaking to you politely ; but, as you are aware, I am 
not polite. If you like politeness, you know where to get it. 
You have your gentleman-friends, you know, and they’ll serve 
you with as much of the article as you want. I don’t keep it 
myself.” 

“ Bounderby,” urged Mr. Gradgrind, we are all liable to 
mistakes — ” 

I thought you couldn^t make ’em,” interrupted Bounderby. 

“Perhaps I thought so. But I say we are all liable to mis- 
takes ; and I should feel sensible of your delicacy and grateful 
for it, if you would spare me these references to Harthouse. I 
shall not associate him in our conversation with your intimacy 
and encouragement ; pray do not persist in connecting him with 
mine.” 

“ I never mentioned his name ! ” said Bounderby. 

“ Well, well ! ” returned Mr. Gradgrind, with a patient, even 
a submissive, air. And he sat for a little while pondering. 
“ Bounderby, I see reason to doubt whether we have ever quite 
understood Louisa.” 

“ What do you mean by We ? ” 

“ Let me say I, then,” he returned, in answer to the coarsely- 
blurted question ; “ I doubt whether I have understood Louisa. 
I doubt whether I have been quite right in the manner of her 
education.” 

“ There you hit it,” returned Bounderby. “ There I agree 
with you. You have found it out at last, have you ? Educa- 
tion ! ril tell you what education is— To be tumbled out of 


208 


TIMES. 


doors, neck and crop, and put upon the shortest allowance of 
everything except blows. That’s what / call education.” 

“ I think your good sense will perceive,” Mr. Gradgrind 
remonstrated in all humility, “ that whatever the merits of such 
a system may be, it would be difficult of general application to 
girls.” 

"‘I don’t see it at all, sir,” returned the obstinate Boun- 
derby. 

“Well,” sighed Mr. Gradgrind, “we will not enter into the 
question. I assure you I have no desire to be controversial. 
I seek to repair what is amiss, if I possibly can ; and I hope 
you will assist me in a good spirit, Bounderby, for I have been 
very much distressed.” 

“ I don’t understand you yet,” said Bounderby, with deter- 
mined obstinacy, “ and merefore I won’t make any promises.” 

“ In the course of a few hours, my dear Bounderby,” Mr. 
Gradgrind proceeded in the same depressed and propitiatory man- 
ner, “ I appear to myself to have become better informed as to 
Louisa’s character, than in previous years. The enlightenment 
has been painfully forced upon me, and the discovery is not mine. 
I think there are — Bounderby, you will be surprised to hear me 
say this — I think there are qualities in Louisa, which — which 
have been harshly neglected, and — and a little perverted. And 
— and I would suggest to you, that — that if you would kindly meet 
me in a timely endeavour to leave her to her better nature for a 
while — and to encourage* it to develope itself by tenderness and 
consideration — it — it would be the better for the happiness of 
all of us. Louisa,” said Mr. Gradgrind, shading his face with 
his hand, “ has always been my favourite child.” 

The blustrous Bounderby crimsoned and swelled to such an 
extent on hearing these words, that he seemed to be, and prob- 
ably was, on the brink of a fit. With his very ears a bright 
purple shot with crimson, he pent up his indignation, however, 
and said : 

“You’d like to keep her here for a time ? ” 

I — I had intended to recommend, my dear Bounderb}'-, that 
you should allow Louisa to remain here on a visit, and be at- 
tended by Sissy (I mean of course Cecilia Jupe), who under- 
stands her, and in whom she trusts.” 

“ I gather from all this, Tom Gradgrind,” said Bounderby, 
standing up with his hands in his pockets, “that you are of 
opinion that there’s what people call some incompatibility be- 
tween Loo Bounderby and myself.” 

“ I fear there is at present a general incompatibility between 


HAmD TIMES. 


209 


Louisa and — and — and almost all the relations in which I have 
placed her,” was her father’s sorrowful reply. 

“ Now, look you here, Tom Gradgrind,” said Bounderby the 
flushed, confronting him with his legs wide apart, his hands 
deeper in his pockets, and his hair like a hayfield wherein his 
windy anger was boisterous. “You have said your say; 
I am going to say mine. I am a Coketown man. I am 
Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. 1 know the bricks of this 
town, and I know the works of this town, and I know the 
chimneys of this town, and I know the smoke of this town, and 
' I know the Hands of this town. 1 know ’em all pretty well. 
They’re real. When a man tells me anything about imaginative 
qualities, I always tell that man, whoever he is, that I know 
what he means. He means turtle-soup and venison, with a 
gold spoon, and that he wants to be set up with a coach and 
six. That’s what your daughter wants. Since you are of opin- 
ion that she ought to have what she wants, I recommend you to 
provide it for her. Because, Tom Gradgrind, she will never 
have it from me.” 

“ Bounderby,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “ I hoped, after my en- 
treaty, you would have taken a different tone.” 

“Just wait a bit,” retorted Bounderby, “you have said your 
say, 1 believe. I heard you out ; hear me out, if you please. 
Don’t make yourself a spectacle of unfairness as well as incon- 
sistency, because, although I am sorry to see Tom Gradgrind 
reduced to his present position, I should be doubly sorry to see 
him brought so low as that. Now, there’s an incompatibility of 
some sort or another, I am given to understand by you, be- 
tween your daughter and me. I’ll give ^< 72 / to understand,- in 
reply to that, that there unquestionably is an incompatibility of 
the first magnitude — to be summed up in this — that your 
daughter don’t properly know her husband’s merits, and is not 
impressed with such a sense as would become her, by George ! 
of the honour of his alliance. That’s plain speaking, I hope.” 

“Bounderby,” urged Mr. Gradgrind, “ this is unreasonable.” 

“ Is it ? ” said Bounderby. “ I am glad to hear you say so. 
Because when Tom Gradgrind with his new lights, tells me that 
what I say is unreasonable, I am convinced at once it must be 
devilish sensible. With your permission I am going on. You 
know my origin ; and you know that for a good many years of 
my life I didn’t want a shoeing-horn, in consequence of not 
having a shoe. Yet you may believe or not, as you think 
proper, that there are ladies — born ladies — belonging to fam- 
ilies — Families ! — who next to worship the ground I walk on.” 


210 


HARD TIMES. 


He discharged this like a Rocket, at his father-indaw’s 
head. 

“ Whereas your daughter,” proceeded Bounderby, “ is far from 
being a born lady. That you know, yourself. Not that I care 
a pinch of candle-snuff about such things, for you are very well 
aware I don’t; but that such is the fact, and you, Tom Grad- 
grind, can’t change it. Why do I say this?” 

“ Not, I fear,” observed Mr. Gradgrind, in a low voice, “ to 
spare me.” 

“ Hear me out,” said Bounderby, “and refrain from cutting 
in till your him comes round. I say this, because highly con- 
nected females have been astonished to see the way in which 
your daughter has conducted herself, and to witness her insen- 
sibility. They have wondered how I have suffered it. And 1 
wonder myself now, and I won’t suffer it.” 

“ Bounderby,” returned Mr. Gradgrind, rising, “ the less we 
say to-night the better, I think.” 

“ On the contrary, Tom Gradgrind, the more we say to-night, 
the better, I think. That is,” the consideration checked him, 
“ till I have said all I mean to say, and then I don’t care how 
soon we stop. I come to a question that may shorten the bus- 
iness. What do you mean by the proposal you made just 
now ? ” 

“ What do I mean, Bounderby?” 

“ By your visiting proposition,” said Bounderby, with an in- 
flexible jerk of the hayfield. 

“ I mean that I hope you may be induced to arrange in a 
friendly manner, for allowing Louisa a period of repose and re- 
flection here, which may tend to a gradual alteration for the 
better in many respects.” 

“ To a softening down of your ideas of the incompatibility? ” 
said Bounderby. 

“ If you put it in those terms.” 

“ What made you think of this ? ” said Bounderby. 

“ I have already said, I fear Louisa has not been understood. 
Is it asking too much, Bounderby, that you, so far her elder, 
should aid in trying to set her right ? You have accepted a 
great charge of her ; for better for worse, for — ” 

Mr. Bounderby may have been annoyed by the repetition of 
his own words to Stephen Blackpool, but he cut the quotation 
short with an angry start. 

“ Come ! ” said he, “ I don’t want to be told about that. I 
know what I took her for, as well as you do. Never you mind 
what I took her for ; that’s my lookout.” 


HARD TIMES. 


2II 


“ I was merely going on to remark, Bounderby, that we may 
all be more or less in the wrong, not even excepting you ; and 
that some yielding on your part, remembering the trust you have 
accepted, may not only be an act of true kindness, but perhaps 
a debt incurred towards Louisa.” 

“ I think differently,” blustered Bounderby. “ I am going 
to finish this business according to my own opinions. Now, 1 
don’t want to make a quarrel of it with you, Tom Clradgrind. 
'ro tell you the truth, I don’t think it would be worthy of my 
reputation to quarrel on such a subject. As to your gentle- 
man-friend, he may take himself off, wherever he likes best. 
If he falls in my way, I shall tell him my mind ; if he don’t fall 
in my way, I shan’t, for it won’t be worth my while to do it. 
As to your daughter, whom I made Loo Bounderby, and might 
have done better by leaving Loo Gradgrind, if she don’t come 
home to-morrow, by twelve o’clock at noon, I shall understand 
that she prefers to stay away, and I shall send her wearing ap- 
parel and so forth over here, and you’ll take charge of her for 
the future. What I shall say to people in general, of the incom- 
patibility that led to my so laying down the law, will be this. I 
am Josiah Bounderby, and I had my bringing-up; she’s the 
daughter of Tom Gradgrind, and she had her bringing-up ; and 
the two horses wouldn’t pull together. I am pretty well known 
to be rather an uncommon man, I believe : and most people 
will understand fast enough that it must be a woman rather out 
of the common, also, who, in the long run, would come up to 
my mark.” 

“ I.et me seriously entreat you to reconsider this, Boun- 
derby,” urged Mr. Gradgrind, “ before you commit yourself to 
such a decision.” 

“ I always come to a decision,” said Bounderby, tossing his 
hat on ; “ and whatever I do, I do at once. 1 should be sur- 
prised at Tom Gradgrind’s addressing such a remark to Josiah 
Bounderby of Coketown, knowing what he knows of him, if I 
could be surprised by anything Tom Gradgrind did, after his 
making himself a party to sentimental humbug. I have given 
you my decision, and I have got no nore to say. Good night ! ” 

So Mr. Bounderby went home to his town house to bed. At 
five minutes past twelve o’clock next day, he directed Mrs, 
Bounderby’s property to be carefully packed up and sent to 
Tom Gradgrind’s; advertised his country retreat for sale by 
private contract ; and resumed a bachelor life. 


212 


HARD TIMES. 


CHAPTER IV. 

Los^. 

S HE robbery at the Bank had not languished before, 
and did not cease to occupy a front place in the at- 
tention of the principal of that establishment now. In 
' boastful proof of his promptitude and activity, as a 

remarkable man, and a self-made man, and a commercial won- 
der more admirable than Venus, who had risen out of the mud 
instead of the sea, he liked to show how little his domestic affairs 
abated his business ardor. Consequently, in the first few 
weeks of his resumed bachelorhood, he even advanced upon his 
usual display of bustle, and every day made such a rout in re- 
newing his investigations into the robbery, that the officers who 
had it in hand almost wished it had never been committed. 

They were at fault too, and off the scent. Although they 
had been so quiet since the first outbreak of the matter, that 
most people really did suppose it to have been abandoned as 
hopeless, nothing new occurred. No implicated man or woman 
took untimely courage, or made a self-betraying step. More 
remarkable yet, Stephen Black j)ool could not be heard of, and 
the mysterious old woman remained a mystery. 

Things having come to this pass, and showing no latent 
signs of stirring beyond it, the upshot of Mr. Bounderby’s in- 
vestigations was, that he resolved to hazard a bold burst. He 
drew up a placard, offering Twenty Pounds reward for the ap- 
prehension of Stephen Blackpool, suspected of complicity in 
the robbery of the Coketown Bank on such a night ; he de- 
scribed the said Stephen Blackpool by dress, complexion, esti- 
mated height, and manner, as minutely as he could ; he recited 
how he had. left the town, and in what direction he had been 
last seen going ; he had the whole printed in great black letters 
on a staring broadsheet ; and he caused the walls to be ‘posted 
with it in the dead of night, so that it should strike upon the 
sight of the whole population at one blow. 

The factory-bells had need to ring their loudest that morn- 
ing to disperse the groups of workers who stood in the tardy 
daybreak, collected round the placards, devouring them with 
eager eyes. Not the least eager of the eyes assembled, were 
the eyes of those who could not read. These people, as they 
'listened to the friendly voice that read aloud — there was always 


I/ARD TIMES. 


213* 

some such ready to help them — stared at the characters which 
meant so much with a vague awe and respect that would have 
been half ludicrous, if any aspect of public ignorance could 
ever be otherwise than threatening and full of evil. Many ears 
and eyes were busy with a vision of the matter of these plac- 
ards, among turning spindles, rattling looms, and whirring 
wheels, for hours afterwards ; and when the Hands cleared out 
again into the streets, there were still as many readers as be- 
fore. 

Slackbridge, the delegate, had to address his audience too 
that night ; and Slackbridge had obtained a clean bill from the 
printer, and had brought it in his pocket. O my friends and 
fellow countrymen, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown, 
oh, my fellow brothers and fellow workmen and fellow citizens 
and fellow men, what a to-do was there, when Slackbridge un- 
folded what he called “ that damning document,” and held it 
up to the gaze, and for the execration, of the working-man 
community ! “ Oh my fellow men, behold what a traitor in the 

camp of those great spirits who are enrolled upon the holy 
scroll of Justice and of Union, is appropriately capable ! Oh 
my prostrate friends, with the galling yoke of tyrants on your 
necks and the iron foot of despotism treading down your fallen 
forms into the dust of the earth, upon which right glad would your 
oppressors be to see you creeping on your bellies all the days 
of your lives, like the serpent in the garden — oh my brothers, 
and shall I as a man not add, my sisters too, what do you say, 
now, of Stephen Blackpool, with a slight stoop in his shoulders, 
and about five foot seven in height, as set forth in this degrad- 
ing and disgusting document, this blighting bill, this pernicious 
placard, this abominable advertisement ; and with what majesty 
of denonncement will you crush the viper, who would bring 
this stain and shame upon the God-like race that happily has 
cast him out for ever ! Yes, ray compatriots, happily cast him 
out and send him forth ! For you remember how he stood 
here before you on this platform ; you remember how, face to 
face and foot to foot, I pursued him through all his intricate 
windings ; you remember how he sneaked and slunk, and sidled, 
and splitted of straws, until, with not an inch of ground to 
which to cling, I hurled him out from amongst us : an object 
for the undying finger of scorn to point at, and for the aveng- 
ing fire of every free and thinking mind to scorch and sear ! 
And now my friends — my laboring friends, for I rejoice and 
triumph in that stigma — my friends whose hard but honest beds 
are mapde in toil, and whose scanty but independent pots are 


214 


//A/^D TIMES. 


boiled in hardship ; and, now I say, my friends, what appella- 
lation has that dastard craven taken to himself, when, with the 
mask torn from his features he stands before us in all his native 
deformity, a What ? A thief ! A ])lunderer ! A proscribed 
fugitive, with a price upon his head ; a fester and a wound 
upon the noble character of the Coketown operative 1 There- 
fore, my band of brothers in a sacred bond, to which your chil- 
dren and your children’s children yet unborn have set their in- 
fant hands and seals, 1 propose to you on the ])art of the United 
Aggregate Tribunal, ever watchful for your welfare, ever zealous 
for your benefit, that this meeting does Resolve ; That Stephen 
Blackpool, weaver, referred to in this placard, having been 
already solemnly disowned by the community of Coketown 
Hands, the same are free from the shame of his misdeeds, and 
cannot as a class be reproached with his dishonest actions ! ” 

Thus Slackbridge ; gnashing and perspiring after a prodigious 
sort. A few stern voices called out “ No ! ” and a score or 
two hailed, with assenting cries of “ Hear, hear ! ” the caution 
from one man, “ Slackbridge, y’or over better int ; y’ or a goen 
too fast ! ” But these were pigmies against an army ; the gen- 
eral assemblage subscribed to the gospel according to Slack- 
bridge, and gave three cheers for him, as he sat demonstratively 
panting at them. 

These men and women were yet in the streets, passing 
quietly to their homes, when Sissy, who had been called away 
from Louisa some minutes before, returned. 

“ Who is it ? ” asked Louisa. 

“ It is Mr. Bounderby,” said Sissy, timid of’ the name, “and 
your brother Mr. Tom, and a young woman who says her name 
is Rachael, and that you know her.” 

“ What do they want. Sissy dear ? ” 

“ They want to see you. Rachael has been crying, and 
seems angry.” - 

“ Father,” said Louisa, for he was present, “ I cannot refuse 
to see them, for a reason that will explain itself. Shall they 
come in here ? ” 

As he answered in the affirmative. Sissy went away to bi^ng 
them. She re-appeared with them directly. Tom was last ; 
and remained standing in the obscurest part of the room, near 
the door. 

“ Mrs. Bounderby,” said her husband, entering with a cool 
nod, “ 1 don’t disturb you, I hoi)e. This is an unseasonable 
hour, but here is a young woman who has been making state- 
ments which render my visit necessary. Tom Gradgrind, as 


IfA/^D TIMES, 


215 


your son, young Tom, refuses for some obstinate reason or other 
to say anything at all about those statements, good or bad, 
I am obliged to confront her with your daughter.” 

“ You have seen me once before, young lady,” said Rachael, 
standing in front of Louisa. 

Tom coughed. 

“ You have seen me, young lady,” repeated Rachael, as she 
did not answer, “ once before.” 

Tom coughed again. 

“ I have. 

Rachael cast her eyes proudly towards Mr. Bounderby, and 
said, “Will you make it known, young lady, where, and who 
was there?” 

“ I went to the house where Stephen Blackpool lodged, on 
the night of his discharge from his work, and I saw you there. 
He was there too : and an old woman who did not speak, and 
whom I could scarcely see, stood in a dark corner. My brother 
was with me.” 

“WTy couldn’t you say so, young Tom?” demanded Boun- 
derby. 

“ I promised my sister I wouldn’t.” Which Louisa hastily 
confirmed. “ And besides,” said the whelp bitterly, “ she tells 
her own story so precious well — and so full — that what business 
had I to take it out of her mouth ! ” 

“Say, young lady, if you please,” pursued Rachael, “why in 
an evil hour, you ever came to Stephen’s that night. 

“ I felt compassion for him,” said Louisa, her colour deepen- 
ing, “and I wished to know what he was going to do, and 
wished to offer him assistance.” 

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Mr. Bounderby. “ Much flattered 
and obliged.” 

“ Did you offer him,” asked Rachael, “ a bank-note ? ” 

“ Yes ; but he refused it, and would only take two pounds in 
gold.” 

Rachael cast her eyes towards Mr. Bounderby again. 

“ Oh certainly ! ” said Bounderby. “ If you put the question 
whether your ridiculous and improbable account was true dr not, 
I am bound to say it’s confirmed.” 

“Young lady,” said Rachael, “Stephen Blackpool is now 
named as a thief in public print all over this town, and where 
else ! There have been a meeting to-night where he have been 
spoken of in the same shameful way. Stephen ! The honest- 
est lad, the truest lad, the best !” Her indignation failed her, 
and she broke off, sobbing. 


2i6 


HARD TIMES. 


“ I am very, very sorry,” said Louisa. 

“ O young lady, young lady,” returned Rachael, “ I hope 
you may be, but I don’t know ! I can’t say what you may ha’ 
done ! The like of you don’t know us, don’t care for us, don’t 
belong to us. I am not sure why you may ha’ come that night. 
I can’t tell but what you may ha’ come wi’ some aim of your 
own, not mindin to what trouble you brought such as the poor 
‘lad. I said then. Bless you for coming, and I said it of my 
heart, you seemed to take so pitifully to him ; but I don’t know 
now, I don’t know ! ” 

Louisa could not reproach her for her unjust suspicions ; 
she was so faithful to her idea of the man, and so afflicted. 

“ And when I think,” said Rachael through her sobs, “ that 
the poor lad was so grateful, thinkin you so good to him — when 
I mind that he put his hand over his hard-worken face to hide 
the tears that you brought up ’there — O, I hope you may be 
sorry, and ha’ no bad cause to be it ; but I don’t know, I don’t 
know ! ” 

“ You’re a pretty article,” growled the whelp, moving uneasily 
in his dark corner, “ to come here with these precious imputa- 
tions ! You ought to be bundled out for not knowing how to 
behave yourself, and you would be by rights.” * 

She said nothing in reply ; and her low weeping was the only 
sound that was heard, until Mr. Bounderby spoke. 

“ Come ! ” said he, “ you know what you have- engaged to do. 
You had better give your mind to that ; not this.” 

“’Deed, I am loath,” returned Rachael, drying her eyes, 
“that any here should see me like this ; but T won’t be seen so 
again. Young lady, when I had read what’s put in print of 
Stephen — and what has just as much truth in it as if it had been 
put in print of you — I went straight to the Bank to say I knew 
where Stephen was, and to give a sure and certain promise that 
he should be here in two days. I couldn’t meet wi’ Mr. Boun- 
derby then, and your brother sent me away, and I tried to find 
you, but you was not to be found, and I went back to work. 
Soon as I come out of the Mill to-night, I hastened to hear 
what was said of Stephen — for I know wi’ pride he will come 
back to shame it! — and then I went again to seek Mr, Boun- 
derby, and I found him, and I told him every word I knew; 
and he believed no word I said, and brought me here.” 

“ So far, that’s true enough,” assented Mr. Bounderby, with 
his hands in his pockets and his hat on. “ But I have known 
you people before to-day, you’ll observe, and I know you never 
die for want of talking. Now, I recommend you not so much 


IfA/^D TIMES. 


217 

to mind talking just now, as doing. You have undertaken to 
do something ; all I remark upon that at present is, do it ! ” 

“ I have written to Stephen by the post that went out this 
afternoon, as I have written to him once before sin’ he went 
away,” said Rachael ; “ and he will be here, at furthest, in two 
days.” 

“Then, I’ll tell you something. You are not aware perhaps,” 
retorted Mr. Bounderby, “ that you yourself have been looked 
after now and then, not being considered quite free from suspi- 
cion in this business, on account of most people being judged 
according to the company they keep. The post-office hasn’t 
been forgotten either. What I’ll tell you is, that no letter to 
Stephen Blackpool has ever got into it. Therefore, what has 
become of yours, I leave you to guess. Perhaps you’re mis- 
taken, and nQver wrote any.” 

“ He hadn’t been gone from here, young lady,” said Rachael, 
turning appealingly to Louisa, “ as much as a week, when he 
sent me the only letter 1 have had from him, saying that he was 
forced to seek work in another name.” 

“ Oh, by George ! ” cried Bounderby, shaking his head, with 
a whistle, “he changes his name, does he ! That’s rather un- 
lucky, too, for such an immaculate chap. It’s considered a 
little suspicious in Courts of Justice, I believ''e, when an Inno- 
cent happens to have many names.” 

“ What,” said Rachael, with tears in her eyes again, “ what, 
young ladyj in the name of Mercy, was left the poor lad to do ! 
The masters against him on one hand, the men against him on 
the other, he only wan tin to work hard in peace, and do what 
he felt right. Can a man have no soul of his own, no mind of 
his own ? Must he go wrong all through wi’ this side, or must 
he go wrong all through wi’ that, or else be hunted like a hare?” 

“ Indeed, indeed, I pity him from my heart,” returned Louisa ; 
“ and I hope that he will clear himself.” 

“ You need have no fear of that, young lady. He is sure ! ” 

“All the surer, I suppose,” said Mr. Bounderby, “for your 
refusing to tell where he is ? Eh ? ” 

“ He shall not, through any act of mine, come back wi’ the 
unmerited reproach of being brought back. He shall come 
back of his own accord to clear himself, and put all those that 
have injured his good character, and he not here for its defence, 
to shame. I have told him what has been done against him,” 
said Rachael, throwing off all distrust as a rock throws off the 
sea, “ and he will be here, at furthest, in two days.” 

“Notwithstanding which,” added Mr. Bounderby, “if he can 
10 


2i8 


HARD TIMES. 


be laid hold of any sooner, he shall have an earlier opportunity 
of clearing himself As to you, I have nothing against you ; 
what you came and told me turns out to be true, and I have 
given you the means of proving it to be true, and there’s an 
end of it. I wish you good-night all ! I must be off to look a 
little further into this.” 

Tom came out of his corner when Mr. Bour.derby moved, 
moved with him, kept close to him, and w'ent away with him. 
The only parting salutation of which he delivered himself was a 
sulky “ Good night, father ! ” With a brief speech, and a scowl 
at his sister, he left the house. 

Since his sheet-anchor had come home, Mr. Gradgrind had 
been sparing of speech. He still sat silent, when Louisa mildly 
said : 

“ Rachael, you will not distrust me one day, when you know 
me better.” 

“ It goes against me,” Rachael answered in a gentler manner, 
“ to mistrust any one ; but when I am so mistrusted — when we 
all are — I cannot keep such things quite out of my mind. I 
ask your pardon for having done you an injury. I don’t think 
what I said, now. Yet I might come to think it again, wi’ the 
poor lad so wronged.” 

“ Did you tell him in your letter,” inquired Sissy, that sus- 
picion seemed to have fallen upon him, because he had been 
seen about the bank at night ? He would then know what he 
would have to explain on coming back, and would be ready.” 

“Yes, dear,” she returned ; “ but I can’t guess what can have 
ever taken him there. He never used to go there. It w'as 
never in his way. His way was the same as mine, and not 
near it.” 

Sissy had already been at her side asking her where she lived, 
and whether she might come to-morrow-night, to inquire if there 
were news of him. 

“ I doubt,” said Rachael, “ if he can be here till next day.” 

“ Then I will come next night too,” said Sissy. 

When Rachael, assenting to this, was gone, Mr. Gradgrind 
lifted up his head, and said to his daughter : 

“Louisa, my dear, I have never that I know of, seen this 
man. Do you believe him to be implicated ?” 

“ I think I have believed it, father, though with great diffi- 
culty. I do not believe it now.” 

“That is to say, you once persuaded yourself to believe it, 
from knowing him to'be suspected. His a[)pearance and inan- 
ner ; are they so honest ? ” 


//ARD TIMES. 


219 


“ Very honest.” 

“ And her confidence not to be shaken ! I ask myself,” said 
Mr. Gradgrind, musing, “ does the real culprit know of these 
accusations ? Where is he ? Who is he ? ” 

His hair had latterly began to change colour. As he leaned 
upon his hand again, looking gray and old, Louisa, with a face 
of fear and pity, hurriedly went over to him, and sat close at 
his side. Her eyes by accident met Sissy’s at the moment. 
Sissy flushed and started, and Louisa put her finger on her 
lip. 

Next night, when Sissy returned home and told Louisa that 
Stephen was not come, she told it in a whisper. Next night 
again, when she came home with the same account, and added 
that he had not been heard of, she spoke in the same low fright- 
ened tone. From the moment of that interchange of looks, 
they never uttered his name, or any reference to him, aloud ; 
nor ever pursued the subject of the robbery, when Mr. Grad- 
grmd spoke of it. 

The two appointed days ran out, three days and nights ran 
out, and Stephen Blackpool was not come, and remained un- 
heard of. On the fourth day, Rachael, with unabated confi- 
dence, but considering her despatch to have miscarried, went 
up to the Bank, and showed her letter from him with his ad- 
dress, at a working colony, one of many, not upon the main 
road, sixty miles away. Messengers were sent to that place, 
and the whole town looked for Stephen to be brought in next 
day. 

During this whole time the whelp moved about with Mr. 
Bounderby like his shadow, assisting in all the proceedings. 
He was greatly excited, horribly fevered, bit his nails down to 
the quick, spoke in a hard rattling voice, and with lips that 
were black and burnt up. At the hour when the suspected man 
was looked for, the whelp was at the station ; offering to wager 
that he had made off before the arrival of those who were sent 
in quest of him, and that he would not appear. 

The whelp was right. The messengers returned alone. 

1 Rachael’s letter had gone, Rachael’s letter had been delivered, 
Stephen Blackpool had decamped in that same hour ; and no 
soul knew more of him. The only doubt in Coketown was, 
whether Rachael had written in good faith, believing that he 
really would come back, or warning him to fly. On this point 
opinion was divided. 

Six days, seven days, far on into another week. The 
wretched whelp plucked up a ghastly courage, and began to 


220 


JIAI^D TIMES. 


grow defiant. ‘‘ Was the suspected fellow the thief? A pretty 
question ! If not, where was the man, and why did he not 
come back ? ” 

Where was the man, and why did he not come back ? In the 
dead of night the echoes of his own words, which had rolled 
Heaven knows how far away in the daytime, came back instead, 
and abided by him until morning. 


CHAPTER V. 

Found. 

AY and night again, day and night again. No Stephen 
Blackpool. Where was the man, and why did he not 
come back ? 

Every night. Sissy went to Rachael’s lodging, and sat 
with her in her small neat room. All day, Rachael toiled as 
such people must toil, whatever their anxieties. The smoke- 
serpents were indifferent who was lost or found, who turned 
out bad or good ; the melancholy mad elephants, like the 
Hard Fact men, abated nothing of their set routine, whatever 
happened. Day and night again, day and night again. The 
monotony was unbroken. hZven Stephen Blackpool’s dis- 
appearance was falling into the general way, and becoming as 
monotonous a wonder as any piece of machinery in Coke- 
town. 

“ I misdoubt,” said Rachael, “ if there is as many as twenty 
left in all this place, who have any trust in the poor dear lad 
now.” 

She said it to Sissy, as they sat in her lodging, lighted only 
by the lamp at the street-corner. Sissy had come there when 
it was already dark, to await her return from work ; and they 
had since sat at the window where Rachael had found her, 
wanting no brighter light to shine on their sorrowful talk. 

“If it hadn’t been mercifully brought about, that I was to 
have you to speak to,” pursued Rachael, “ times are, when I 
think my mind would not have kept right. But I get hope and 
strength through you ; and you believe that though appearances 
may rise against him, he will be proved clear ? ” 

“ I do believe so,” returned Sissy, “ with my whole heart. 
I feel so certain, Rachael, that the confidence you hold in yours 



HARD TIMES. 


221 


against all discouragement, is not like to be wrong, that 1 have 
no more doubt of him than if I had known him through as many 
years of trial as you have.” 

“And I, my dear,” said Rachael, with a tremble in her voice, 
“have known him through them all, to be, according to his 
quiet ways, so faithful to everything honest and good, that if he 
! was never to be heard of more, and I was to live to be a hun- 
; dred years old, I could say with my last breath, God knows 
my heart. I have never once left trusting Stephen Black- 
, l)ool ! ” 

^ “ We all believe, up at the I.odge, Rachael, that he will be 

^ freed from suspicion, sooner or later.” 

t “ The better I know it to be so believed there, my dear,” 

[ said Rachael, “and the kinder I feel it that you come away 
from there, purposely to comfort me, and keep me company, 

■ and be seen wi’ me when I am not yet free from all suspicion 
myself, the more grieved I am that I. should ever have spoken 
those mistrusting words to the young lady. And yet — ” 

“ You don’t mistrust her now, Rachael ? ” 

“ Now that you have brought us more together, no. But I 
L can’t at all times keep out of my mind — ” 

I Her voice so sunk into a low and slow communing with her- 
self, that Sissy, sitting by her side, was obliged to listen with 
attention. * 

“ I can’t at all times keep out of my mind, mistrustings of some 
one. I can’t think who ’tis, 1 can’t think how or why it may 
be done, but I mistrust that some one has put Stephen out of 
the way. 1 mistrust that by his coming back of his own accord, 
and showing himself innocent before them all, some one would 
be confounded, who — to prevent that — has stopped him, and 
put him out of the way.” 

“ That is a dreadful thought,” said Sissy, turning pale. 

“ It is a dreadful thought to think he may be murdered.” 

Sissy shuddered and turned paler yet. 

“VV^hen it makes its way into my mind, dear,” said Rachael, 

; “ and it will come sometimes, though 1 do all I can to keep it 
; out, wi’ counting on to high numbers as 1 work, and saying 
j over and over again pieces that 1 knew when 1 were a child — 

I I fall into such a wild, hot hurry, that, however tired 1 am, I 
t want to walk fast, miles and mile.s. 1 must get the better of 
I this before bed-time. I’ll walk home wi’ you.” 

I “ He might fall ill upon the journey back,” said Sissy, faintly 
I offering a worn-out scrap of hope ; “ and in such a case, there; 
I are many places on the road where he might stop.” 


222 


//^/v’Z> TIMES. 


“ But he is in none of them. He has been sought for in all, 
and he’s not there.” 

“ True,” was Sissy’s reluctant admission. 

“ He’d walk the journey in two days. If he was footsore 
and couldn’t walk, I sent him in the letter he got, the money to 
ride, lest he should have none of his own to spare.” 

“ Let us hope that to-morrow will bring something better, 
Rachael. Come into the air ! ” 

Her gentle hand adjusted Rachael’s shawl upon her shining 
black hair in the usual manner of her wearing it, and they went 
out. The night being fine, little knots of Hands were here and 
there lingering at street-corners ; but it was supper time with 
the greater part of them, and there were but few people in the 
streets. 

‘^You are not so hurried now, Rachael, and your hand is 
cooler.” 

“ I get better, dear, if I can only walk, and breathe a little . 
fresh. ’Times when I can’t, I turn weak and confused.” 

“ But you must not begin to fail, Rachael, for you may be 
wanted at any time to stand by Stephen. To-morrow is Satur- 
day. If no news comes to-morrow, let us walk in the country 
on Sunday morning, and strengthen you for another week. 
Will you go ? ” 

“ Yes, dear.” 

They were by this time in the street where Mr. Bounderby’s 
house stood. The way to Sissy’s destination led them past the 
door, and they were going straight towards it. Some train had 
newly arrived in Coketown, which had put a number of vehicles ' 
in motion, and scattered a considerable bustle about the town. 
Several coaches were rattling before them and behind them as ' 
they approached Mr. Bounderby’s, and one of the latter drew •. 
up with such briskness as they were in- the act of passing the i 
house, that they looked round involuntarily. The bright gas- 
light over Mr. Bounderby’s steps showed them Mrs. Sparsit in 
the coach, in an ecstasy of excitement, struggling to open the 
door; Mrs. Sparsit seeing them at the same moment, called 
to them to stop. 

“It’s a coincidence,” exclaimed Mrs. Sparsit, as she was 
released by the coachman. “ It’s a Providence ! Come out, 
ma’am !” then said Mrs. Sparsit, to some one inside, “Come' 
out, or we ’ll have you dragged out ! ” 

Hereupon, no other than the mysterious old woman de-' 
scended. Whom Mrs. Sparsit incontinently collared. 

“ Leave her alone, everybody ! ” cried Mrs. Sparsit, with great] 




I/A/^D TIMES. 


223 

energy. “ Let nobody touch her. She belongs to me. Come 
in, ma’am!” then said Mrs. Sparsit, reversing her former word 
of command. “ Come in, ma’am, or we’ll have you dragged 
in I ” 

The spectacle of a matron of classical deportment, seizing an 
ancient woman by the throat, and hauling her into a dwelling- 
house, would have been, under any circumstances, sufficient 
temptation to all true English stragglers so blest as to witness 
it, to force a way into that dwelling-house and see the matter 
' out. Rut when the phenomenon was enhanced by the notoriety 
and mystery by this time associated all over the town, with the 
Rank robbery, it would haved lured the stragglers in, with an 
irresistible attraction, though the roof had been expected to 
fall upon their heads. Accordingly, the chance witnesses on 
the ground, consisting of the busiest of the neighbours to the 
number of some five-and-twenty, closed in after Sissy and 
Rachael, as they closed it after Mrs. Sparsit and her prize ; and 
the v/hole body made a disorderly irruption into Mr. Roun- 
derby’s dining room, where the people behind lost not a mo- 
ment’s time in mounting on the chairs, to get the better of the 
people in front. 

“Fetch Mr. Ron n derby down ! ” cried Mrs. Sparsit. “Ra- 
chael, young woman ; you know who this is ? ” 

“ It’s Mrs. Pegler,” said Rachael. lA 

“ I should think it is 1 ” cried Mrs. Sparsit. exulting. “ Fetch 
Mr. Rounderby. Stand away, everybody ! ” Here old Mrs. 
Pegler, muffling herself up, and shrinking from observation, 
whispered a word of entreaty. “ Don’t tell me,” said Mrs. 
Sparsit, aloud, “ I have told you twenty times, coming along, 
that 1 will not leave vou till I have handed you over to him my- 
seffi” 

Mr. Rounderby now appeared, accompanied by Mr. Grad- 
grind and the whelp, with whom he had been holding conference 
upstairs. IVIr. Rounderby looked more astonished than hospita- 
ble, at sight of this uninvited party in his dining-room. 

“Why, what’s the matter now?” said he. “Mrs. Sparsit, 
ma’am ? ” 

“ Sir,” explained that worthy woman. “ I trust it is my good 
fortune to produce a person you have much desired to find. 
Stimulated by my wish to relieve your mind, sir, and connect- 
ing together sucli imperfect clues to the part of the country in 
which that person might be supposed to reside, as have been 
afforded by the young woman Rachael, fortunately now present 
to identify, I have had the happiness to succeed, and to bring 


224 


HAJ^D TIMES, 


that person with me — I need not say most unwillingly on her 
part. It has not been, sir, without some trouble that I have 
effected this ; but trouble in your service is to me a pleasure, 
and hunger, thirst, and cold a real gratification.” 

Here Mrs. Sparsit ceased ; for Mr. Bounderby’s visage exhib- 
ited an extraordinary combination of all possible colors and 
expressions of discomfiture, as old Mrs. Pegler was disclosed to 
his view, 

“ Why, what do you mean by this ? ” was his highly unex- 
pected demand, in great warmth. “ I ask you, what do you mean 
by this, Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am ? ” 

“Sir !” exclaimed Mrs. Sparsit, faintly. 

“Why don’t you mind your own business, ma’am ?” roared 
Boiinderby. “ How dare you go and poke your officious nose 
into my family affairs ? ” 

This allusion to her favorite feature overpowered Mrs. Spar- 
sit. She sat down stiffly in a chair, as if she were frozen ; and, 
with a fixed stare at Mr. Boiinderby, slowly grated her mittens 
against one another, as if they were frozen too. 

“ My dear Josiah ! ” cried Mrs. Pegler, trembling. “ My 
darling boy ! I am not to blame. It’s not my fault, Josiah. 
I told this lady over and over again, that I knew she was doing 
what would not be agreeable to you, but she would do it.” 

“What did you let her bring you for? Couldn’t you knock 
her cap off, or her tooth out, or scratch her, or do something or 
other to her ? ” asked Bounderby. 

“My own boy! She threatened me that if I resisted her, I 
should be brought by constables, and it was better to come 
quietly than make that stir in such a — ” Mrs. Pegler glanced 
timidly but proudly round the walls — “ such a fine house as this. 
Indeed, indeed, it is not my fault I My dear, noble, stately 
boy ! I have always lived quiet and secret, Josiah, my dear. 
I have never broken the condition once. I have never said I 
was your mother. I have admired you at a distance ; and if I 
have come to town sometimes, with long times between, to take 
a proud peep at you, I have done it unbeknown, my love, and 
gone away again.” 

Mr. Bounderby, with his hands in his pockets, walked in im- 
patient mortification up and down at the side of the long dining- 
table, while the spectators greedily took in every syllable of 
Mrs. Pegler’s appeal, and each succeeding syllable became more 
and more round-eyed. Mr. Bounderby still walking uj) and 
down when Mrs. Pegler had done, Mr. Gradgrind addressed 
that maligned old lady : 


HARD TIMES. 


225 


“ I am surprised, madam,” be observed with severity, “ that 
in your old age you have the face to claim Mr. Bounderby for 
your son, after your unnatural and inhuman treatment of him.” 

“ unnatural ! ” cried poor old Mrs. Pegler. '-'‘Me inhu- 
man ! To my dear boy ? ” 

“ Dear ! ” repeated Mr. Gradgrind. “ Yes ; dear in his self- 
made prosperity, madam, I dare say. Not very dear, however, 
when you deserted him in his infancy, and left him to the bru- 
tality of a drunken grandmother.” 

“/deserted my Josiah!” cried Mrs. Pegler, clasping her 
hands. “ Now, Lord forgive you, sir, for your wicked imagi- 
nations, and for your scandal against the memory of my poor 
mother, who died in my arms before Josiah was born. May 
you repent of it, sir, and live to know better ! ” 

She was so very earnest and injured, that Mr. Gradgrind, 
shocked by the possibility which dawned upon him, said in a 
gentler tone : 

“ Do you deny, then, madam, that you left your son to — to be 
brought up in the gutter ? ” 

“ Josiah in the gutter !” exclaimed Mrs. Pegler. “ No such 
a thing, sir. Never ! For shame on you ! My dear boy 
knows, and will give you to know, that though he come of 
humble parents, he come of parents that loved him as dear as 
the best could, and never thought it hardship on themselves to 
pinch a bit that he might write and cipher beautiful, and I’ve 
his books at home to show it ! Aye, have I ! ” said Mrs. Peg- 
ler, with indignant pride. “ And my dear boy knows, and will 
you to know, sir, that after his beloved father died when he 
was eight year old, his mother, too, could pinch a bit, as it was 
her duty and her pleasure and her pride to do it, to help him 
out in life, and put him ’prentice. And a steady lad he was, 
and a kind master he had to lend him a hand, and well he 
worked his own way forward to be rich and thriving. And /’ll 
give you to know, sir — for this my dear boy won’t — that though 
his mother kept but a little village shop, he never forgot her, 
but pensioned me on thirty [)ound a-year — more than I want, 
for I put by out of it — only making the condition that I was to 
keep down in my own part, and make no boasts about him, and 
not trouble him. And I never have, except with looking at 
him once a year, when he has never knowed it. And it’s right,” 
said poor old Mrs. Pegler, in affectionate championship, “ that 
1 should keep down in my own part, and 1 have no doubts that 
if 1 was here I should do a many unbefitting things, and I am 
well contented, and I can keep my pride in my Josiah to myself, 
10 * 


226 


TIMES. 


and I can love for love’s own sake ! And I am ashamed of 
you, sir,” said Mrs. Pegler, lastly, ‘‘for your slanders and sus- 
picions. And I never stood here before, nor never wanted to 
stand here when my dear son said no. And I shouldn’t be here 
now, if it hadn’t been for being brought here. And for shame 
upon you, O for shame, to accuse me of being a bad mother to 
my son, with my son standing here to tell you so different ! ” 

The bystanders, on and off the dining-room chairs, raised a 
murmur of sympathy with Mrs. Pegler, and Mr. Gradgrind felt 
himself innocently placed in a very distressing predicament, 
when Mr. Bounderby, who had never ceased walking up and 
down, and had every moment swelled larger and larger, and 
grown redder and redder, stopped short. 

“I don’t exactly know,” said Mr. Bounderby, “how I come 
to be favoured with the attendance of the present company, but 
I don’t inquire. When they’re quite satisfied, perhaps they’ll, 
be so good as to disperse ; whether they’re satisfied or not, per- 
haps they ’ll be so good as to disperse. I’m not bound to de- , 
liver a lecture on my family affairs, I have not undertaken to 
do it, and I’m not a going to do it. Therefore those who - 
expect any explanation whatever upon that branch of the sub- 
ject, will be disappointed — particularly Tom Gradgrind, and he ‘ 
can’t know it too soon. In reference to the Bank robbery, 
there has been a mistake made, concerning my mother. If ' 
there hadn’t been over-officiousness, it wouldn’t have been made, 
and I hate over-officiousness at all times, whether or no. Good / 
evening ! ” 

Although Mr. Bounderby carried it off in these terms, hold- 
ing the door open for the company to depart, there was a blus- 
tering sheepishness upon him, at once extremely crestfallen and ^ 
superlatively absurd. Detected as the Bully of humility, who * 
had built his windy reputation upon lies, and in his boastfulness .' 
had put the honest truth as far away from him as if he had ad- T 
vanced the mean claim (there is no meaner) to tack himself on J 
to a pedigree, he cut a most ridiculous figure. With the people ;■ 
filing oft' at the door he held, who he knew would carry what 
had passed to the whole town, to be given to the four winds, he V 
could not have looked a Bully more shorn and forlorn, if he had S 
had his ears cropped. Even that unlucky female, Mrs. Sparsit, | 
fallen from her pinnacle of exultation into the Slough of Des- i 
pond, was not in so bad a plight as that remarkable man and | 
self-made Humbug, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. f 

Rachaeland Sissy, leaving Mrs. Pegler to occupy a bed at her | 
son’s for that night, walked together to the gate of Stone Lodge | 


//AA'D TIMES. 


227 


and there parted. Mr. Gradgrind joined them before they had 
gone very far, and spoke with much interest of Stephen Black- 
])ool ; for whom he thought this signal failure of the suspicions 
against Mrs. Pegler was likely to work well. 

As to the whelp ; throughout this scene as on all other late 
occasions, he had stuck close to Bounderby. He seemed to feel 
that as long as Bounderby could make no discovery without his 
knowledge, he was so far safe. He never visited his sister, and 
had only seen her once since she went home : that is to say, on 
the night when he still stuck close to Bounderby, as already re- 
lated. 

There was one dim unformed fear lingering about his sister’s 
mind, to which she never gave utterance, which surrounded the 
graceless and ungrateful boy with a dreadful mystery. The 
same dark possibility had presented itself in the same shapeless 
guise, this very day, to Sissy, when Rachael spoke of some one 
who would be confounded by Stephen’s return, having put him 
out of the way. Louisa had never spoken of harboring any 
suspicion of her brother in connexion with the robbery, she 
and Sissy had held no confidence on the subject, save in that 
one interchange of looks when the unconscious father rested 
his gray head on his hand ; but it was understood between 
them, and they both knew it. This other fear was so awful, 
that it hovered about each of them like a ghostly shadow ; 
neither daring to think of its being near herself, far less of its 
being near the other. 

And still the forced spirit which the whelp had plucked up, 
throve with him. If Stephen Blackpool was not the thief, let 
him show himself. Why didn’t he? 

Another night. Another day and night. No Stephen Black- 
pool. Where was the man, and why did he not come back ? 


chaptp:r VI. 

The Starlight. 

HE Sunday was a bright Sunday in autumn, clear 
and cool, when early in the morning Sissy and Rachael 
met, to walk in the country. 

As Coketown cast ashes not only on its own head but 
on the neighborhood’s too — after the manner of those pious per- 
sons who do penance for their own sins by putting other peoi)le in- 




228 


HARD TIMES. 


to sackcloth — it was customary for those v/honowand then tliirst- 
ed for a draught of pure air, which is not absolutely the most 
wicked among the vanities of life, to get a few miles away by 
the railroad, and then begin their walk, or their lounge in the 
fields. Sissy and Rachael helped themselves out of the smoke 
by the usual means, and were put down at a station about mid- 
way between the town and Mr. Bounderby’s retreat. 

Though the green landscape was blotted here and there with 
heaps of coal, it was green elsewhere, and there were trees to 
see, and there were larks singing (though it was Sunday), and 
there were pleasant scents in the air, and all was overarched by 
a bright blue sky. In the distance one way, Coketown showed 
as a black mist ; in another distance, hills began to rise ; in a 
third, there was a faint change in the light of the horizon, 
where it shone upon the far-off sea. Under their feet, the 
grass was fresh ; beautiful shadows of branches flickered upon 
it, and speckled it ; hedgerows were luxuriant ; everything was 
at peace. Engines at pits’ mouths, and lean old horses that 
had worn the circle of their daily labour into the ground, were 
alike quiet ; wheels had ceased for a short space to turn ; and 
the great wheel of earth seemed to revolve without the shocks 
and noises of another time. 

They walked on across the fields and down the shady lanes, 
sometimes getting over a fragment of a fence so rotten that it 
dropped at a touch of the foot, sometimes passing near a wreck 
of bricks and beams overgrown with grass, marking the site of 
deserted works. They followed paths and tracks, however 
slight. Mounds where the grass was rank and high, and where 
brambles, dock-weed, and such-like vegetation, were confusedly 
heaped together, they always avoided ; for dismal stodes were 
told in that country of the old pits hidden beneath such indi- 
cations. 

The sun was high when they sat down to rest. They had 
seen no one, near or distant, for a long time ; and the solitude 
remained unbroken. “ It is so still here, Rachael, and the way 
is so untrodden, that I think we must be the first who have been 
here all the summer.” 

As Sissy said it her eyes were attracted by another of those 
rotten fragments of fence upon the ground. She got up to look 
at it. “And yet I don’t know. This has not been broken 
v;^iy long. The wood is quite fresh where it gave way. Here 
are footste})s too. — O Rachael ! ” 

She ran back and caught her round the neck. Rachel had 
already started up. 


HARD TIMES. 


229 


“ \Vliat is the matter ? ” 

“ 1 don’t know. There is a hat lying in the grass.” 

They went forward together. Rachael took it up, shaking 
from head to foot. She broke into a passion of tears and 
lamentations : Stepen Blackpool was written in his own hand 
on the inside. 

“ O the poor lad, the poor lad ! He has been made away 
with. He is lying murdered here ! ” 

“ Is there — has the hat any blood upon it? ” Sissy faltered. 

They were afraid to look ; but they did examine it, and 
found no mark of violence, inside or out. It had been lying 
there for some days, for rain and dew had stained it, and the 
mark of its shape was on the grass where it had fallen. They 
looked fearfully about them, without moving, but could see 
nothing more. “ Rachael,” Sissy whispered, “ I will go on a lit- 
tle by myself.” 

She had unclasped her hand, and was in the act of stepping 
forward, when Rachael caught her in both arms with a scream 
that resounded over the wide landscape. Before them, at their 
very feet, was' the brink of a black ragged chasm hidden by the 
thick grass. They sprang back, and fell upon their knees, each 
hiding her face upon the other’s neck. 

“ O, my good Lord ! He’s down there ! Down there ! ” 
At first this, and her terrific screams, were all that could be got 
from Rachael, by any tears, by any prayers, by any re[)resenta- 
tions, by any means. It was impossible to hush her ; and it 
was deadly necessary to hold her, or she would have flung her- 
self down the shaft. 

“Rachael, dear Rachael, good Rachael, for the love of 
Heaven not these dreadful cries ! Think of Stephen, think of 
Stephen, think of Stephen ! ” 

By an earnest repetition of this entreaty, poured out in all 
the agony of such a moment. Sissy at last brought her to be silent, 
and to look at her with a tearless face of stone. 

“Rachael, Stephein may,be living. You wouldn’t leave him 
lying maimed at the bottom of this dreadful place, a moment, 
if you could bring help to him !” 

“ No, no, no ! ” 

“ Don’t stir from here, for his sake ! Let me go and listen.” 

She shuddered to approach the pit ; but she crept towards it 
on her hands and knees, and called to him as loud as she could 
call. She listened, but no sound replied. She called again and 
listened ; still no answering sound. She did this, twenty, thirty 
times. She took a little clod of earth from the broken ground 


230 


//A/^D TIMES, 


where Ire had stumbled and threw it in. She could not hear it 
fall. 

The wide prospect, so beautiful in its stillness but a few min- 
utes ago, almost carried despair to her brave heart, as she rose 
and looked all round her, seeing no help. “ Rachael, we must 
lose not a moment. We must go in different directions, seek- 
ing aid. You shall go by the way we have come, and I will go 
forward by the path. Tell any one you see, and ev.ery one 
what has happened. Think of Stephen, think of Stephen I ” 

She knew by Rachael’s face that she might trust her now. 
And after standing for a moment to see her running, wringing 
her hands as she ran, she turned and went upon her own 
search ; she stopped at the hedge to tie her shawl there as a 
guide to the place, then threw her bonnet aside, and ran as she 
had never run before. 

Run, Sissy, run, in Heaven’s name ! Don’t stop for breath. 
Run, run ! Quickening herself by carrying such entreaties in 
her thoughts, she ran from field to field, and lane to lane, and 
place to place, as she had never run before ; until she came to 
a shed by an engine-house, where two men lay in the shade, 
asleep on straw. 

First to wake them, and next to tell them, all so wild and 
breathless as she was, what had brougnt her there, were diffi- 
culties; but they no sooner understood her than their spirits 
were on fire like hers. One of the men was in a drunken 
slumber, but on his comrade’s shouting to him that a man had 
fallen down the Old Hell Shaft, he started out to a pool of 
dirty water, put his head in it, and came back sober. 

With these two men she ran to another half-a-mile further, 
and with that one to another, while they ran elsewhere. Then 
a horse was found ; and she got another man to ride for life or 
death to the railroad, and send a message to Louisa, which she 
wrote and gave him. By this time a whole village was up ; 
and windlasses, poles, candles, lanterns, all things necessary, 
were fast collecting and being brought into one jfiace, to be 
carried to the Old Hell Shaft. 

it seemed now hours and hours since she had left the lost 
man lying in the grave where he had been buried alive. She 
could not bear to remain away from it any longer — it was like 
deserting him— and she hurried swiftly back, accompanied by 
half-a-dozen laborers, including the drunken man whom the 
news had sobered, and who was the best man of all. When 
they came to the Old Hell Shaft, they found it as lonely as she 
had left it. The men called and listened as she had done, and 


IIAIW TIMES, 


231 

examined the edge. of the chasm, and settled how it had hap- 
pened, and then sat down to wait until the implements they 
wanted should come up. 

Every sound of insects" in the air, every stirring of the 
leaves, every whisper among these men, made Sissy tremble, 
for she thought it was a cry at the bottom of the pit. But the 
wind blew idly over it, and no sound arose to the surface, and 
they sat upon the grass, waiting and waiting. After they liad 
waited some time, straggling people who had heard of the acci- 
dent began to come up; then the real help of implements be- 
gan to arrive. In the midst of this, Rachael returned ; and 
with her party there was a surgeon, who brought some wine 
and medicines. But, the expectation among the people that 
the man would be found alive, was very slight indeed. 

There being now people enough present to impede the work, 
the sobered man put himself at the head of the rest, or was pnt 
there by the general consent, and made a large ring round the 
Old Hell Shaft, and appointed men to keep it. Besides such 
volunteers as were accepted to work, only Sissy and Rachael 
were at first permitted within this ring ; but, later in the day, 
when the message brought an express from Coketown, Mr. 
Oradgrind and Louisa, and Mr. Bo'underby, and the whelp, 
were also there. 

Tlie sun was four hours lower than when Sissy and Rachael 
had first sat down upon the grass, before a means of enabling 
two men to descend securely was rigged with poles and ropes. 
Difficulties had arisen in the construction of this machine, 
simple as it was ; requisites had been found wanting, and mes- 
sages had had to go and return. It was five o’clock in the 
afternoon of the bright autumnal Sunday, before a candle was 
sent down to try the air, while three or four rough faces stood 
crowded close together, attentively watching it : the men at the 
windlass lowering as they were told. The candle was brought 
up again, feebly burning, and then some water was cast in. 
Then the bucket was hooked on ; and the sobered man and 
another got in with lights, giving the word “ Lower away ! ” 

As the rope went out, tight and strained, and thp windlass 
-creaked, there was not a breath among the one or two hun- 
dred men and women looking on, that came as it was wont to 
come. The signal was given and the windlass stopped, with 
abundant rope to s[)are. Ajiparently so long an interval en- 
sued with the men at the windlass standing idle, that some 
women shrieked that another accident had happened ! But 
the surgeon who held the watch, declared five minutes not to 


232 


HARD TIMES, 


have elapsed yet, and sternly admonished them to keep 
silence. He had not well done speaking, when the windlass 
was reversed and worked again. Practised eyes knew that it 
did not go as heavily as it would if both workmen had been 
coming up, and that only one was returning. 

The rope came in tight and strained ; and ring after ring 
was coiled upon the barrel of the windlass, and all eyes were 
fastened on the pit. The sobered man was brought up and 
leaped out briskly on the grass. There was an universal cry 
of “ Alive or dead.?” and then a deep, profound hush. 

When he said “ Alive ! ” a great shout arose and many eyes 
had tears in them. 

“ But he’s hurt very bad,” he added, as soon as he could 
make himself heard again. “Where’s doctor? He’s hurt so 
very bad, sir, that we donno how to get him up.” 

They all consulted together, and looked anxiously at the 
surgeon, as he asked some questions, and shook his head on 
receiving the replies. The sun was setting now; and the red 
light in the evening sky touched every face there, and caused 
it to be distinctly seen in all its wrapt suspense. 

The consultation ended in the men returning to the wind- 
lass, and the pitman going down again, carrying the wine and 
some other small matters with him. Then the other man came 
up. In the meantime under the surgeon’s directions, some 
men brought a hurdle, on which others made a thick bed of 
sj^are clothes covered with loose straw, while he himself con- 
trived some bandages and slings from shawls and handker- 
chiefs. As these were made, they were hung upon an arm of 
the pitman who had last come up, with instructions how to use 
them : and as he stood, shown by the light he carried, leaning 
his powerful loose hand upon one of the poles, and sometimes 
glancing down the pit, and sometimes glancing round upon the 
people, he was not the least conspicuous hgure in the scene. 
It was dark now, and torches were kindled. 

It a])peared from the little this man said to those about him, 
which was quickly repeated all over the circle, that the lost 
man had fallen upon a mass of crumbled rubbish, with which 
the pit was half choked up, and that his fall had been further 
broken by some jagged earth at the side, hie lay upon his 
back with one arm doubled under him, and according to his 
own belief had hardly stirred since he fell, except that he had 
moved his free hand to a side pocket, in which he remembered 
to have some bread and meat (of which he had swallowed 
crumbs), and had likewise scooi)ed up a little water in it now 


^ HARD TIMES. 


233 


and then. He had come straight away from his work, on being 
written to, and had walked the whole journey ; and was on his 
way to Mr. Bounderby’s country-house after dark, when he fell. 
He was crossing that dangerous country at such a dangerous 
time, because he was innocent of what was laid to his charge, 
and couldn’t rest from coming the nearest way to deliver him- 
self up. The Old Hell Shaft, the pitman said, with a curse 
upon it, was worthy of its bad name to the last ; for though 
Stephen could speak now, he believed it would soon be found 
to have mangled the life out of him. 

When all was ready, this man, still taking his last hurried 
charges from his comrades and the surgeon after the windlass 
had begun to lower him, disappeared into the pit. The rope 
went out as before, the signal was made as before, and the 
windlass stopped. No man removed his hand from it now. 
Every one waited with his grasp set, and his body bent down 
to the work, ready to reverse and wind in. At length the 
signal was given, and all the ring leaned forward. 

For, now, the rope came in, tightened and strained to its ut- 
most as it appeared, and the men turned heavily, and the 
windlass complained. It was scarcely endurable to look at the 
roi)e, and think of its giving way. But, ring after ring was 
coiled upon the barrel of the windlass safely, and the connect- 
ing chains appeared, and finally the bucket with the two men 
holding on at the sides — a sight to make the head swim, and 
oppress the head — and tenderly supporting between them, slung 
and tied within, the figure of a poor, crushed, human creature. 

A low murmur of pity went round the throng, and the 
women wept aloud, as this form, almost without form, was 
moved very slowly from its iron deliverance, and laid upon the 
bed of straw. At first, none but the surgeon went close to it. 
He did what he could in its adjustment on the couch, but the 
best that he could do was to cover it. That gently done, he 
called to him Rachael and Sissy. And at that time the pale, 
worn, patient face was seen looking up at the sky, with the 
broken right hand lying bare on the outside of the covering 
garments, as if waiting to be taken by another hand. 

They gave him drink, moistened his face with water, and 
administered some drops of cordial and wine. Though he lay 
quite motionless looking up at the sky, he smiled and said, 
“ Rachael.” 

She stooped down on the grass at his side, and bent over 
him until her eyes were between his and the sky, for he could 
not so much as turn them to look at her. 


234 


i/A/i;n TIMES. 


‘‘ Rachael, my dear.” 

She took his hand. He smiled again and said, “ Don’t left 
go.” 

“ Thou ’rt in great pain, my own dear Stephen ? ” 

“ I ha’ been, but not now. I ha’ been — dreadful, and dree, 
and long, my dear — but ’tis ower now. Ah, Rachael, aw a 
muddle ! Fro’ first to last, a muddle ! ” 

The spectre of his old look seemed to pass as he said the 
word. 

“ I ha’ fell into th’ pit, my dear, as have cost wi’in the 
knowledge o’ old fok now livin, hundreds and hundreds o’ 
men’s . lives — fathers, sons, brothers, dear to thousands an 
thousands, an keepin ’em fro’ want and hunger. I ha’ fell 
into a pit that ha’ been wi’ th’ Fire-damp crueller than battle. 
I ha’ read on ’t in the public petition, as onny one may read, 
fro’ the men that works in pits, in which they ha’ pray’n an 
pray’n the lawmakers for Christ’s sake not to let their work be 
murder to ’em, but to spare ’em for th’ wives and children 
that they loves as well as gentlefok loves theirs. When it were 
in work, it killed wi’out need ; when ’tis let alone, it kills wi’- 
out need. See how we die an no need, one way an another — 
in a muddle — every day ! ” 

He faintly said it, without any anger against any one. 
Merely as the truth. 

‘•Thy little sister, Rachael, thou hast not forgot her. Thou’rt 
not like to forget her now, and me so nigh her. Thou know’st 
— poor, patient, suff’rin, dear — how thou didst work for her, 
seet ’n all day long in her little chair at thy winder, and how 
she died, young and misshapen, awlung o’ sickly air as had’n no 
need to be, an awlung o’ working people’s miserable homes. 
A muddle ! Aw a muddle ! ” 

Louisa approached him ; but he could not see her, lying 
with his face turned up to the night sky. 

“ If aw th’ things that tooches us, my dear, was not so mud- 
dled, I should’n ha’ had’n need to coom heer. If we was net 
in a muddle among ourseln, I should’n ha’ been, by my own 
fellow weavers and workin’ brothers, so mistook. If Mr. Boun- 
derby had ever know’d me right — if he’d ever know’d me at aw 
— he would’n ha’ took’n offence wi’ me. He woiild’n ha’ sus- 
l)ect’n me. But look up yonder, Rachael ! Lookaboove!” 
following his eyes, she saw that he was gazing at a star. 

“It ha’ shined upon me,” he said reverently, “in my pain and 
trouble down below. It ha’ shined into my mind. I ha’ look’n 
at ’t an thowt o’ thee, Rachael, till the muddle in my mind 



Rkcoverf.i) from the Old Hell-Shaft.— [Page 234.] 


I 


1 





HARD TIMES. 


235 


have cleared awa, above a bit, I hope. If soorn ha’ been wan- 
tin’ in unnerstan’in me better, I, too, ha’ been wantin’ in iinner- 
stan’in them better. When I got thy letter, I easily believen 
that what the yoong ledy sen an done to me, an what her 
brother sen and done to me, was one, and that there were a 
wicket plot betwixt ’em. When I fell, I were in anger wi’ her, 
and hurryin on t’ be as unjust t’ her as oothers was t’ me. But 
in our judgments, like as in our doins, we mun bear and forbear. 
In my pain and trouble, lookin up yonder, — wi’ it shinin on me — 
I ha’ seen more clear, and ha’ made it my dyin prayer that aw 
th’ world may on’y coom toogether more, and get a better un- 
nerstan’in o’ one another, than when I were in’t my own weak 
seln.” 

Louisa hearing what he said, bent over him on the opposite 
side to Rachael, so that he could see her. 

“You ha’ heard?” he said after a few moments’ silence. 
“ I ha’ not forgot you, ledy.” 

“ Yes, Stephen, I have heard you. And your prayer is mine.” 

“ You ha’ a father. Will yo tak’ a message to him ? ” 

“ He is here,” said Louisa, with dread. “Shall I bring him 
to you ? ” • 

“If you please.’*’ 

I.ouisa returned with her father. Standing hand-in-hand, 
they both looked down upon the solemn countenance. 

“ Sir, yo will clear me and mak my name good wi’ aw men. 
This I leave to yo.” 

Mr. Gradgrind was troubled and asked how? 

“Sir,” was the reply : “ yor son will tell yo how. Ask him. 
I make no charges : I leave none ahint me : not a single word. 
I ha’ seen aod spok’n wi’ y,pr son, one night. I ask no more 
o’ yo than that yo clear me — an 1 trust to yo to do’t.” 

The bearers being now ready to carry him away, and the 
surgeon being anxious for his removal, those who had torches 
or ianterns prepared to go in front of the litter. Before it was 
raised, and while they were arranging how to go, he said to 
Rachael, looking upward at the star : 

“Often as I coom to myseln, and found it shinin on me 
down there in my trouble, I thowt it were the star as guided 
to Onr Saviour’s home. I awmust think it be the very star ! ” 

They lifted him up and he was overjoyed to find that they 
were about to take him in the direction whither the star seemed 
I to him to lead. 

I “ Rachael, beloved lass ! Don’t let go my hand. We may 
I walk toogether t’ night, my dear ! ” 


236 


//A/?D TIMES. 


“ I will hold thy hand, and keep beside thee, Stephen, all 
the way.” 

“ Bless thee ! Will soombody be pleased to coover my face ! ” 
They carried him very gently along the fields, and down the 
lanes, and over the wide landscape ; Rachael always holding 
the hand in hers. Very few whispers broke the mournful 
silence. It was soon a funeral procession. The star had 
shown him where to find the God of the poor ; and through 
humility, and sorrow, and forgiveness, he had gone to his 
Redeemer’s rest. 


CHAPTER VII. 

Whelp-htmting. 

EFORE the ring formed round the Old Hell Shaft was 
broken, one figure had disappeared from within it. 
Mr. Bounderby and his shadow had not stood near 
Louisa, who held her father’s arm, but in a retired 
place by themselves. When Mr. Gradgrind was summoned to 
the couch. Sissy, attentive to all that happened, slipped behind 
that wicked shadow — a sight in the horror of his face, if there 
had been eyes there for any sight but one — and whispered in 
his ear. Without turning his head, he conferred with her a few 
moments, and vanished. Thus the whelp had gone out of the 
circle before the people moved. 

When the father reached home, he sent a message to Mr. 
Bounderby’s, desiring his son to cgme to him directly. The 
reply was, that Mr. Bounderby having missed him in the crowd, 
and seeing nothing of him since, had supposed him to be at 
Stone Lodge. 

“ I believe, father,” said Louisa, “ he will not come back to 
town to-night.” Mr. Gradgrind turned away and said no more. 

In the morning he went down to the Bank himself as soon as 
it was opened, and seeing his son’s place empty (he had not 
the courage to look in at first), went back along the street 
to meet Mr. Bounderby on his way there. To whom he said 
that, for reasons he would soon explain, but entreated not then 
to be asked for, he had found it necessary to employ his son at 
a distance for a little while. Also, that he was charged with the 
duty of vindicating Stej)hen Blackpool’s memory, and declar- 
ing the thief. Mr. Bounderby quite confounded, stood stock- 





HARD TIMES. 


237 

still in the street after his father-in-law had left him, swelling 
like an immense soap-bubble, without its beauty. 

Mr. Gradgrind went home, locked himself in his room, and 
kept it all that day. When Sissy and Louisa tapped at his 
door, he said, without opening it, “ Not now, my dears ; in the 
evening." On their return in the evening, he said, “ I am not 
- able yet — to-morrow." He ate nothing all day, and had no 
candle after dark : and they heard him walking to and fro late 
at night. 

But in the morning he aj^peared at breakfast at the usual 
hour, and took his usual place at the table. Aged and bent he 
looked, and quite bowed down ; and yet he looked a wiser 
I man, and a better man, than in the days when in this life he 
wanted nothing but Facts. Before he left the room, he ap- 
t pointed a time for them to come to him ; and so with his gray 
[ head drooping, went away. 

“ Dear father," said Louisa, when they kept their appoint- 
^ ment, “ you have three young children left. They will be dif- 
ferent, I will be different yet, with Heaven’s help." 

^ She gave her hand to Sissy, as if she meant with her help too. 
\ “ Your wretched brother," said Mr. Gradgrind. “ Do you 

\ think he had planned this robbery, when he went with you to 
the lodging ? " 

“ I fear so, father. I know he had wanted money very much, 
and had spent a great deal." 

“ The poor man being about to leave the town, it came into 
his evil brain to cast suspicion on him ? " 
t “I think it must have flashed upon him while he sat there, 
E father. For I asked him to go there with me. The visit did 
Knot originate with him." 

; . “ He had some conversation with the poor man. Did he take 

S him aside ? " 

L “ He took him out of the room. I asked him afterwards, 
igwhy he had done so, and he made a plausible excuse ; but since 
, last night, father, and when 1 remember the circumstances by 
its light, I am afraid 1 can imagine too truly what passed be- 
tween them." 

“ I.et me know," said her father, “if your thoughts present 
your guilty brother in the same dark view as mine." 

“ I fear, father," hesitated Louisa, “ that he must have made 
! some representation to Stephen Blackpool — perhaps in my name, 
i perhaps in his own — which induced him to do in good faith and 
j honesty, what he had never done before, and to wait about the 
Bank those two or three nights before he left the town." 


238 


I/AJ?D TIMES, 


“ Too plain ! ” returned the father. “ Too plain ! ” 

He shaded his face, and remained silent for some moments. 
Recovering himself, he said : 

“ And now, how is he to be found ? How is he to be saved 
from justice? In the few hours that I can possibly allow to 
elapse before I publish the truth, how is he to be found by us, 
and only by us? Ten thousand pounds could not eftect it.” 

“ Sissy has effected it, father.” 

He raised his eyes to where she stood, like a good fairy in his 
house, and said in a tone of softened gratitude and grateful kind- 
ness, “ It is always you, my child ! ” 

“ We had our fears,” Sissy explained, glancing at Louisa, 
“ before yesterday ; and when I saw you brought to the side of 
the litter last night, and heard what passed (being close to 
Rachael all the time), I went to him when no one saw, and said 
to him, ‘ Don’t look at me. See where your father is. Es- 
cape at once, for his sake and your own ! ’ He was in a trem- 
ble before I whispered to him, and he started and trembled 
more then, and said, ‘Where can I go ? I have very little mon- 
ey, and I don’t know who will hide me ! ’ I thought of father’s 
old circus. I have not forgotten where Mr. Sleary goes at this 
time of year, and I read of him in a paper only the other day. 
I told him to hurry there, and tell his name, and ask Mr. Sleary 
to hide him till I came. ‘ I’ll get to him before the morning,’ 
he said. And I saw him shrink away among the people.” 

“ Thank Heaven ! ” exclaimed his father. “ He may be got 
abroad yet.” 

It was the more hopeful as the town to which Sissy had di- 
rected him was within three hours’ journey of Liv'erpool, whence 
he could be swiftly dispatched to any part of the world. But, 
caution being necessary in communicating with him — for there 
was a greater danger every moment of his being suspected now, 
and nobody could be sure at heart, but that Mr. Bounderby 
himself, in a bullying vein of \)ublic zeal, might play a Roman 
part — it was consented that Sissy and Louisa should repair to 
the place in question, by a circuitous course alone ; and that 
the unhappy father, setting forth in an opposite direction, should 
get round to the same bourne by another and wider route. It 
was further agreed that he should not present himself to Mr. 
Sleary, lest his intentions should be mistrusted, or the intelli- 
gence of his arrival should cause his son to take llight anew ; 
but, that the communication should be left to Sissy and Louisa 
to open ; and that they should inform the cause of so much 
misery and disgrace, of his father’s being at hand and of the 


HARD TIMES. 


239 


purpose for which they had come. When these arrangements 
had been well considered and were fully understood by all three, 
it was time to begin to carry them into execution. Early in 
the afternoon, Mr. Gradgrind walked direct from his own house 
into the country, to be taken up on the line by which he was 
to travel ; and at night the remaining two set forth upon their 
different course, encouraged by not seeing any face they knew. 

The two travelled all night, except when they were left, for 
odd numbers of minutes, at branch-places up illimitable flights 
of steps, or down wells — which was the only variety of those 
branches — and, early in the morning, were turned out on a 
swamp, a mile or two from the town they sought. From this 
dismal spot they were rescued by a savage old postilion, who 
happened to be up early, kicking a horse in a fly ; and so were 
smuggled into the town by all the back lanes where the pigs 
lived : which, although not a magnificent or even savoury ap- 
proach, was, as is usual in such cases, the legitimate highway. 

The first thing they saw on entering the town was the skele- 
ton of Sleary’s Circus. The company had departed for another 
town more than twenty miles off, and had opened there last 
night. The connection between the, two places was by a hilly 
turnpike-road, and the travelling on that road was very slow. 
Though they took but a hasty breakfast, and no rest (which it 
would have been in vain to seek under such anxious circum- 
stances), it was noon before they began to find the bills of 
Sleary’s Horseriding on barns and walls, and one o’clock when 
they stopped in ihe market-place. 

A Grand Morning Performance by the Riders, commencing 
at that very hour, was in course of announcement by the bell- 
man as they set their feet upon the stones of the street. Sissy 
recommended that, to avoid making inquiries and attracting at- 
tention in the town, they should present themselves to pay at 
the door. If Mr. Sleary were taking the money, he would be 
sure to know her, and would proceed with discretion. If he 
were not, he would be sure to see them inside ; and, knowing 
what he had done with the fugitive, would proceed with discre- 
tion still. 

Therefore, they repaired, with fluttering hearts, to the well- 
remembered booth. The flag with the inscription Sleary’s 
Horseriding, was there; and the Gothic niche was there ; but 
Mr. Sleary was not there. Master Kidderminster, grown too 
maturely turfy to be received by the wildest credulity as Cupid 
any more, had yielded to the invincible force of circumstances 
(and his beard), and, in the capacity of a man who made him- 


240 


TIMES. 


self generally useful, presided on this occasion over the excheq- 
uer — having also a drum in reserve, on which to expend his 
leisure moments and superfluous forces. In the extreme sharp- 
ness of his look out for base coin, Mr. Kidderminster, as at 
present situated, never saw anything but money ; so Sissy 
passed him unrecognised, and they went in. 

The Emperor of Japan, on a steady old white horse stencilled 
with black spots, was twirling five wash-hand basins at once, 
as it is the favourite recreation of that monarch to do. Sissy, 
though well acquainted with his Royal line, had no personal 
knowledge of the present Emperor, and his reign was peaceful. 
Miss Josephine Sleary, in her celebrated graceful Equestrian 
Tyrolean Flower-Act, was then announced by a new clown 
(who humorously said Cauliflower Act), and Mr. Sleary ap- 
peared, leading her in. 

Mr. Sleary had only made one cut at the Clown with his long 
whip-lash, and the Clown had only said, “ If you do it again. 
I’ll throw the horse at you ! ” when Sissy was recognised both 
by father and daughter. But they got through the Act with 
great self-possession ; and Mr. Sleary, saving for the first in- 
stant, conveyed no more expression into his locomotive eye 
than into his fixed one. The performance seemed a little long 
to Sissy and Louisa, particularly when it stopped to afford the 
Clown an opportunity of telling Mr. Sleary (who said “ Indeed, 
sir ! ” to all his observations in the calmest way, and with his 
eye on the house), about two legs sitting on three legs looking 
at one leg, when in came four legs, and laid hold of one leg, 
and up got two legs, caught hold of three legs, and threw ’em 
at four legs, who ran away with one leg. For, although an in- 
genious Allegory relating to a butcher, a three-legged stool, a 
dog, and a leg of mutton, this narrative consumed time ; and 
they were in great suspense. At last, however, little fair-haired 
Josephine made her curtsey amid great applause ; and the 
Clown, left alone in the ring, had just warmed himself, and said, 
“ Now 7’11 have a turn ! ” when Sissy was touched on the shoul- 
der, and beckoned out. 

She took Louisa with her ; and they were received by Mr. 
Sleary in a very little private apartment, with canvas sides, a 
grass floor, and a wooden ceiling all aslant, on which the box 
company stamped their approbation, as if they were coming 
through. “ Thethilia,” said Mr. Sleary, who had brandy and 
water at hand, “ it doth me good to thee you. You wath al- 
wayth a favourite with uth, and you’ve done uth credit thinth the 
old timeth I’m thure. You mutht thee our people, my dear. 


J/A/^D TIMES. 


241 


afore we thpeak of bithnith, or they’ll break their hearth — eth- 
pethially the women. Here’th Jothphine hath been and got 
married to E. W. B. Childerth, and thee hath got a boy, and 
though he’th only three yearth old, he thtick'th on to any pony 
you can bring againth him. He’th named The Little Wonder 
Of Thcolathtic Equitation ; and if you don’t hear of that boy 
at Athley’lh, you’ll hear of him at Parith. And you recollect 
Kidderminthter, that wath thought to be rather thweet upon 
yourthelf Well. He’th married too. Married a widder. 
Old enough to be hith mother. Thee wath Tightrope, thee 
wath, and now thee’th nothing — on accounth of fat. They’ve 
got two children, tho we’re thtrong in the Fairy bithnith and 
the Nurthery dodge. If you wath to thee our Children in the 
Wood, with their father and mother both a dyin’ on a horthe — 
their uncle a rethieving of ’em ath hith wardth, upon a horthe — 
themthelvth both a goin’ a blackberryin’ on a horthe — and the 
Robinth a coming in to cover ’em with leavth, upon a horthe — 
you’d thay it wath the completetht thing ath ever you thet your 
eyeth on ! And you remember Emma Gordon, my dear, ath 
wath a’motht a mother to you ? Of courthe you do ; I needn’t 
athk. Well ! Emma, thee lotht her huthband. He wath 
throw-’d a heavy back-fall off a Elephant in a thort of a Pagoda 
thing ath the Thultan of the Indieth, and he never got the bet- 
ter of it : and thee married a thecond time — married a Cheethe- 
monger ath fell in love with her from the front — and he’th a 
Overtheer and makin’ a fortun.” 

These various changes, Mr. Sleary, very short of breath now, 
related with heartiness, and with a wonderful kind of innocence, 
considering what a bleary and brandy-and-watery old veteran he 
was. Afterwards he brought in Josephine, and E. W. B. Child- 
ers (rather deeply-lined in the jaws by daylight), and The Lit- 
tle Wonder of Scholastic Equitation, and in a word, all the com- 
pany. Amazing creatures they were in Louisa’s eyes, so white 
and pink of complexion, so scant of dress, and so demonstra- 
tive of leg ; but it was very agreeable to see them crowding 
about Sissy, and very natural in Sissy to be unable to refrain 
from tears. 

“ There ! Now Thethilia hath kithd all the children, and 
hugged all the women, and thaken handth all round with all the 
men, clear, every one of you, and ring in the band for the thec- 
iOnd part ! ” 

As soon as they were gone, he continued in a low tone. 
“ Now, Thethilia, I don’t athk to know any thecret, but I thup- 
pothe I may conthider thith to be Mith Thquire.” 

11 


242 


IfAJ^D TIMES, 


“ This is his sister. Yes.” 

“And t’other on ’th daughter. That’h what I mean. Hope 
I thee you well, mith. And I hope the Thquire’th well ?” 

“ My father will be here soon,” said Louisa, anxious to bring 
him to the point. “ Is my brother safe ?” 

“ Thafe and thound ! ” he replied. “ I want you jutht to take 
a peep at the Ring, mith, through there. Thethilia, you know 
the dodgeth ; find a thpy-hole for youthelf.” 

They each looked through a chink in the boards. 

“ That’h Jack the Giant Killer — piethe of comic infant bith- 
nith,” said Sleary. “ There’th a property-houthe, you thee, 
for Jack to hide in ; there’th my Clown with a thauthpanlid and 
a thpit, for Jack’th thervant ; there’th little Jack himthelf in a 
thplendid thoot of armour ; there’th two comic black thervants 
twithe ath big ath the houthe, to thtand by it and to bring it in 
and clear it ; and the Giant (a very ecthpenthive bathket one), 
he an’t on yet. Now, do you thee ’em all ?” 

“ Yes,” they both said. 

“ Look at ’em again,” said Sleary, “ look at ’em well. You thee 
’em all? Very good. Now, mith he put a form for them 
to sit on ; “I have my opinionth, and the Thquire your father 
hath hith. I don’t want to know what your brother ’th been up 
to ; ith better for me not to know. All I thay ith, the Thquire 
hath thtood by Thethilia, and I’ll tht and by the Thquire. Your 
brother ith one o’ them black thervanth.” 

Louisa uttered an exclamation, partly of distress, partly of 
satisfaction. 

“ Ith a fact,” said Sleary, “ and even knowin’ it, you couldn’t 
put your finger on him. Let the Thquire come. I thall keep 
your brother here after the preforinanth. 1 thant undreth him, 
nor yet wath hith paint off. Let the Thquire come here after 
the performanth, or come here yourthelf after the performanth, 
and you thall find your brother, and have the whole plathe to 
talk to him in. Never mind the lookth of him, ath long ath 
he’th well hid.” 

Louisa, with many thanks and with a lightened load, detained 
Mr. Sleary no longer then. She left her love for her brother, with 
her eyes full of tears ; and she and Sissy went away until later 
in the afternoon. 

Mr. Gradgrind arrived within an hour afterwards. He too' 
had encountered no one whom he knew ; and was now sanguinec 
with Sleary’s assistance, of getting his disgraced son to Liver- < 
pool in the night. As neither of the three could be his com- 
panion without almost identifying him under any disguise, hei 


I/ARI) TIMES. 


243 


prepared a letter to a correspondent whom he Could trust, be- 
seeching him to ship the bearer off at any cost, to North or 
■South America, or any distant part of the world to which he 
could be the most speedily and privately dispatched. 

This done, they walked about, waiting for the Circus to be 
quite vacated ; not only by the audience, but by the company 
and by the horses. After watching it along time, they saw Mr. 
Sleary bring out a chair and sit down by the side-door smoking ; 
as if that were the signal that they might approach. 

“ Your thervant, Thquire,” was his cautious salutation as they 
passed in. “ If you want me you’ll find me here. You muthn’t 
mind your thon having a comic livery on.” 

They all three went in ; and Mr. Gradgrind sat down forlorn, 
on the Clown’s preforming chair in the middle of the ring. On 
one of the back benches, remote in the subduetl light and the 
strangeness of the place, sat the villanous whelp, sulky to the 
last, whom he had the misery to call his son. 

In a preposterous coat, like a beadle’s, with cuffs and flaps 
exaggerated to an unspeakable extent ; in an immense waist- 
coat, knee-breeches, buckled shoes, and a mad cocked hat ; with 
nothing fitting him, and everything of coarse material, moth- 
eaten, and full of holes ; with seams in his black face, where 
fear and heat had started through the greasy composition daubed 
all over it ; anything so grimly, detestably, ridiculously shame- 
ful as the whelp in his comic livery, Mr. Gardgrind never could 
by any other means have believed in, weighable and measurea- 
ble fact though it was. And one of his model children had 
come to this ! 

At first the whelp would not draw any nearer, but persisted 
in remaining up there by himself. Yielding at length, if any 
concession so sullenly made can be called yielding, to the en- 
treaties of Sissy — for Louisa he disowned altogether — he came 
down, bench by bench, until he stood in the sawdust, on the 
verge of the circle, as far as possible, within its limits, from 
where his father sat. 

“ How was this done ?” asked the father. 

“ How was what done ? ” moodily answered the son. 

“ This robbery,” said the father, raising his voice upon the 
word. 

“ 1 forced the safe myself over night, and shut it up ajar before 
I went away. I had had the key that was found, made long 
before. I dropped it that morning, that it might be supposed 
to have been used. I didn’t take the money all at once. I 


244 


BAI^D TIMES, 


pretended to put my balance away every night, but I didn’t. 
Now you know all about it.” 

If a thunderbolt had fallen on me,” said the father, “ it 
would have shocked me less than this ! ” 

“I don’t see why,” grumbled the son. “So many people 
are employed in situations of trust ; so many people, out of so 
many, will be dishonest. I have heard you talk, a hundred 
times, of its being a law. How can / help laws ? You have 
comforted others with such things, father. Comfort yourself ! ” 

The father buried his face in his hands, and the son stood in 
his disgraceful grotesqueness, biting straw : his hands, with the 
black partly worn away inside, looking like the hands of a mon- 
key. The evening was fast closing in ; and from time to time, 
he turned the whites of his eyes restlessly and impatiently tow- 
ards his father. They were the only parts of his face that 
showed any life or expression, the pigment upon it was so 
thick. 

“ You must be got to Liverpool, and send abroad.” 

“ I suppose I must. I can’t be more miserable anywhere,” 
whimpered the whelp, “than I have been here, ever since I can 
remember. That’s one thing.” 

Mr. Gradgrind went to the door, and returned with Sleary, to 
whom he submitted the question. How to get this deplorable 
object away ? 

“ Why, I’ve been thinking of it, Thquire. There’th not muth 
time to lothe, tho you muth thay yeth or no. 1th over twenty 
mileth to the rail. Thereth a coath in half an hour, that goeth 
to the rail, ’purpothe to cath the mail train. That train will take 
him right to Liverpool.” 

“ But look at him,” groaned Mr. Gradgrind. “ Will any 
coach — ” 

“ I don’t mean that he thould go in the comic livery,” said 
Sleary. “Thay the word, and I’ll make a Jothkin of him, out 
of the wardrobe, in five minutes.” 

“ I don’t understand,” said Mr. Gradgrind. 

“ A Jothkin — a Carter. Make up your mind quick, Thquire. 
There’ll be beer to feth. I’ve never met with nothing but beer 
ath’ll ever clean a comic blackamoor.” 

Mr. Gradgrind rapidly assented ; Mr. Sleary rapidly turned 
out from a box, a smock frock, a felt hat, and other essentials ; 
the whelp rapidly changed clothes behind a screen of baize ; 
Mr. Sleary rapidly brought beer, and washed him white again. 

“ Now,” said Sleary, “come along to the coath, and jump up 
behind ; I’ll go with you there, and they’ll thuppothe you one 


I/A/^D TIMES. 


245 

of my people. Thay farewell to your family, and tharp’th the 
word.” With which he delicately retired. - 

“ Here is your letter,” said Mr. Gradgrind. “All necessary 
means will be ])rovided for you. Atone, by repentance and 
better conduct, fbr the shocking action you have committed, and 
the dreadful consequences to which it has led. Give me your 
hand, my poor boy, and may God forgive you as I do ! ” 

The culprit was moved to a few abject tears by these words 
and their pathetic tone. But, when Louisa opened her arms, 
he repulsed her afresh. 

“ Not you. I don’t want to have anything to say to you ! ” 

O Tom, Tom, do we end so, after all my love ! ” 

“ iVfter all your love ! ” he returned, obdurately. “ Pretty 
love ! Leaving old Bounderby to himself, and packing my 
best friend Mr. Harthouse off, and going home just when I was 
in the greatest danger. Pretty love that ! Coming out with 
every word about our having gone to that place, when you saw 
the net was gathering round me. Pretty love that ! You have 
regularly given me up. You never cared for me.” 

“Tharp’th the word ! ” said Sleary at the door. ’ 

They all confusedly went out : Louisa crying to him that she 
forgave him, and loved him still, and that he would one day be 
sorry to have left her so, and glad to think of these her last 
words, far away : when some one ran against them. Mr. 
Gradgrind and Sissy, who were both before him while his sister 
yet clung to his shoulder, stopped and recoiled. 

For, there was Bitzer, out of breath, his thin lips parted, his 
thin nostrils distended, his white eyelashes quivering, his colour- 
dess face more colourless than ever, as if he ran himself into a 
white heat, when other people ran themselves into a glow. 
There he stood, panting and heaving, as if he had never stop- 
])ed since the night, now long ago, when he had run them down 
before. 

“ Pm sorry to interfere with your ])lans,” said Bitzer, shak- 
ing his head, “but I can’t allow myself to be done by horse- 
riders. I must have young Mr. Tom ; he mustn’t be got away 
by horseriders ; here he is in a smock frock, and I must have 
him ! ” 

By the collar, too, it seemed. For, so he took possesion of 
him. 


246 


HARD TIMES, 


CHAPTER VIIL 


Philosophical. 

HEY went back into the booth, Sleary shutting the 
door to keep intruders out. Bitzer, still holding the 
paralysed culprit by the collar, stood in the Ring, 
blinking at his old patron through the darkness of the 

twilight. 

“Bitzer,” said Mr. Gradgrind, broken down, and miserably 
submissive to him, “ have you a heart ? ” 

“ The circulation sir,” returned Bitzer, smiling at the oddity 
of the question, “couldn’t be carried on without one. No man, 
sir, acquainted with the facts established by Harvey relating to 
the circulation of the blood, can doubt that I have a heart.” 

“ Is it accessible,” cried Mr. Gradgrind, “ to any compassion- 
ate influence ? ” 

“ It is accessible to Reason, sir,” returned the excellent young 
man. “ And to nothing else.” 

They stood looking at each other ; Mr. Gradgrind’ s face 
as white as the pursuer’s. 

“ What motive — even what motive in reason — can you have 
for preventing the escape of this wretched youth,” said Mr. 
Gradgrind, “ and crushing his miserable father ? See his sister 
here. Pity us ! ” 

“ Sir,” returned Bitzer, in a very business-like and logical man- 
ner, “since you ask me what motive I have in reason, for tak- 
ing young Mr. Tom back to Coketown, it is only reasonable to 
let you know. I have suspected young Mr. Tom of this bank- 
robbery from the first. I had had my eye upon him before 
that time, for I knew his ways. I have kept my observations 
to myself, but I have made them ; and I have got ample proofs 
against him now, besides his running away, and besides his own 
confessions, which I was just in time to overhear. I had the 
pleasure of watching your house yesterday morning, and follow- 
ing you here. I am going to take young Mr. Tom back to 
Coketown, in order to deliver him over to Mr. Bounderby. 
Sir, I have no doubt whatever that Mr. Bounderby will then 
promote me to young Mr. Tom’s situation. And I wish to 
have his situation, sir, for it will be a rise to me, and will do 
me good.” 



//A/^£> TIMES, 


247 

“ If this is solely a question of self-interest with you — ” Mr. 
Gradgrind began. 

“ I beg your pardon for interrupting you, sir,” returned Bitzer ; 
“ but I am sure you know that the whole social system is a 
question of self-interest. What you must always appeal to, is a 
person’s self-interest. It’s your only hold. We are so con- 
stituted. I was brought up in that catechism when I was very 
young, sir, as you are aware.” 

What sum of money,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “ will you set 
against your expected promotion ? ” 

“ Thank you, sir,” returned Bitzer, “ for hinting at the pro- 
posal ; but I will not set any sum against it. Knowing that 
your clear head would propose that alternative, I have gone 
over the calculations in my mind, and I find that to compound 
a felony, even on very high terms indeed, would not be as safe 
and good for me as my improved prospects in the Bank.” 

Bitzer,” said Mr. Gradgrind, stretching out his hands as 
though he would have said. See how miserable 1 am ! 

“ Bitzer, I have but one chance left to soften you. You were 
many years at my school. If, in remembrance of the pains be- 
stowed upon you there, you can persuade yourself in any degree 
to disregard your present interest and release my son, I entreat 
and pray you to give him the benefit of that remembrance.” 

“ I really wonder, sir,” rejoined the old pupil in an argu- 
mentative manner, ‘‘ to find you taking a position so untenable. 
My schooling was paid for ; it was a bargain ; and when I came 
away, the bargain ended.” 

It was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy, 
that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any 
account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help with- 
out purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues 
springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the existence 
of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a 
counter. And if we didn’t get to Heaven that way, it was not 
a politico-economical place, and we had no business there. 

“ I don’t deny,” added Bitzer, “ that my schooling was cheap. 
But that comes right, sir. I was made in the cheapest market, 
and have to dispose of myself in the dearest.” 

He was a little troubled here, by Louisa and Sissy crying. 

“ Pray don’t do that,” said he, “ it’s of no use doing that : it only 
worries. You seem to think that 1 have some animosity against 
young Mr. Tom ; whereas I have none at all. I am only go- 
ing, on the reasonable grounds I have mentioned, to take him 
back to Coketown. If he was to resist, I should set up the cry 


248 


HARD TIMES, 


of Stop Thief! But, he won’t resist, you may depend upon ^ 
it.” 

Mr. Sleary, who, with his mouth open and his rolling eye- as ; 
immovably jammed in his head as his fixed one, had listened to . 
these doctrines with profound attention, here stepped forward. 

“Thquire, you know prefectly well, and your daughter 
knowth piefectly well (better than you, becauthe I thed it to 
her), that I didn’t know what your thon had done, and that I ^ 
didn’t want to know — I thed it wath better not, though I only 
thought, then, it wath thome thkylarking. However, thith , 
young man having made it known to be a robbery of a bank, ■ 
why, that’h a theriouth thing; muth too theriouth a thing for - 
me to compound, ath thith young man hath very properly called 
it. Conlhequently, Thquire, you muthn’t quarrel with me if I 
take thith young man’th thide, and thay he’th right and there’th 
no help for it. But I tell you what I’ll do, Thquire; I’ll . 
drive your thon and thith young man over to the rail, and i 
prevent expothure here. I can’t conthent to do more, but I’ll 
do that.” 

Fresh lamentations from Louisa, and deeper affliction on 
Mr. Gradgrind’s part, followed this desertion of them by their 
last friend. But, Sissy glanced to him with great attention ; 
nor did she in her own breast misunderstand him. As they 
were all going out again, he favoured her with one slight roll of 
his movable eye, desiring her to linger behind. As he locked 
the door, he said excitedly : 

. “ I'he Thquire thtood by you, Thethilia, and I’ll thtand by 
the Thquire. More than that : thith ith a prethiouth rathcal 
and belongth to that bluthtering Cove that my people nearly 
pitht out o’ winder. It’ll be a dark night ; I’ve got a horthe 
that’ll do anything but thpeak ; I’ve got a pony that’ll go 
fifteen mile an hour with Childerth driving of him ; I’ve got a 
dog that’ll keep a man to one plathe four-and-twenty hourth. 
Get a word with the young Thquire. Tell him, when he 
theeth our horthe begin to dan the, not to be afraid of being 
thpilt, but to look out for a pony-gig coming up. Tell him, 
when he theeth that gig clothe by, to jump down, and it’ll take 
him off at a rattling pathe. If my dog leth thith young man 
thtir a peg on foot, I give him leave to go. And if my horthe 
ever thtirth from that th])Ot where he beginth a danthing, till the 
morning — I don’t know him ? — Tharp’th the word ! ” 

The word was so sharp, that in ten minutes Mr. Childers, 
sauntering about the market-place in a pair of slippers, had his 
cue, and Mr. Sleary’s equipage was ready. It was a fine sight 


JIAI^D TIMES. 


249 


to behold the learned dog barking round it, and Mr. Sleary in- 
structing him, with his one practical eye, that Bitzer was the 
object x)f his particular attentions. Soon after dark they all 
three got in and started ; the learned dog (a formidable creat- 
ure) already pinning Bitzer with his eye, and sticking close to 
the wheel on his side, that he might be ready for him in the 
event of his showing the slightest disposition to alight. 

The other three sat up at the inn all night in great suspense. 
At eight o’clock in the morning Mr. Sleary and the dog reap- 
peared : both in high spirits. 

“All right, Thquire ! ” said Mr. Sleary, “your thon may be 
aboard-a-thip by thith time. Childerth took him off, an hour 
and a half after we left here lathe night. The horlh danthed 
the polka till he was dead beat (he would have walthed, if he 
hadn’t been in harneth), and then I gave him the word and he 
went to thleep comfortable. Then that prethiouth young Rathcal 
thed he’d go for’ aid afoot, the dog hung on to hith neck-hand- 
kercher with all four legth in the air and pulled him down and 
rolled him over. Tho he come back into the drag, and there 
he that, ’till I turned the horthe’th head, at half-path thixth thith 
morning.” 

Mr. Gradgrind overwhelmed him with thanks, of course ; 
and hinted as delicately as he could, at a handsome remunera- 
tion in money. 

“I don’t want money mythelf, Thquire ; but Childerth ith a 
family man, and if you wath to like to offer him a five-pound 
note, it mightn’t be unactheptable. Likewithe if you wath to 
thand a collar for the dog, or a thet of belth for the horthe, I 
thould be very glad to take ’em. Brandy and water I alwayth 
take.” He had already called for a glass, and now called for 
another. “ If you wouldn’t think it going too far, Thquire, to 
make a little thpreadfor the company at about three and thixth 
ahead; not reckoning Luth, it would make ’em happy.” 

All these little tokens of his gratitude, Mr. Gradgrind very 
willingly undertook to render. Though he thought them far too 
slight, he said, for such a service. 

“ Very well, Thquire ; then, if you’ll only give a Horthe-rid- 
ing, a bethpeak, whenever you can, you’ll more than balanthe 
the account. Now, Thquire, if your daughter will excuthe me, 
I thoud like one parting word with you.” 

Louisa and Sissy withdrew into an adjoining room ; Mr. 
Sleary, stirring and drinking his brandy and water as he stood, 
went on : 


11 * 


250 


/IA/?D TIMES. 


“ Thquire, you don’t need to be told that dogth is wonderful 
aninmlth.” * 

“Their instinct,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “is surprising.” 

“ Whatever you call it — and I’m bletht if I know what to 
call it” — said Sleary, “it ith athonithing. The way in with a 
dog’ll find you — the dithtanthe he’ll come ! ” 

“ His scent,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “ being so fine.” 

“ I’m bletht if I know wdiat to call it,” repeated Sleary, shak- 
ing his head, “ but 1 have had dogth find me, Thquire, in away 
that made me think whether that dog hadn’t gone to another 
dog, and thed, ‘ You don’t happen to know a perthon of the 
name of Thleary, do you ? Perthon of the name of Thleary, 
in the Horthe-Riding way — thout man — game eye ? ’ And 
whether that dog mightn’t have thed, ‘ Well, I can’t thay I know 
him mythelf, but I know a dog that I think w'ould be likely to 
be acquainted with him.’ And whether that dog mightn’t have 
thought it over, and thed, ‘ Thleary, Thleary ! O yeth, to be 
thure ! A friend of mine menthioned him to me at one time. 
I can get you hith addreth directly.’ In conthequenth of my 
being afore the public, and going about tho inuth, you thee, 
there mutht be a number of dogth acquainted with me, 'rhquire, 
that / don’t know ! ” 

Mr. Gradgrind seemed to be quite confounded by this spec- 
ulation. 

“ Any way,” said Sleary, after putting his lips to his brandy 
and water, “ ith fourteen month ago, Thquire, thinthe we w'ath 
at Chethter. We wath getting up our Children in the Wood one 
morning, w'hen there cometh into our Ring, by the thtage door, 
a dog. He had travelled a long w’^ay, he wath in very bad con- 
dithon, he wath lame, and pretty well blind. He went round 
to our children, one after another, as if he wath a theeking for 
a child he know’d ; and then he come to me, and throwd hith- 
elf up behind, and thood on hith two fore-legth, weak ath he 
wath, and then he wagged hith tail and died. Thquire, that 
dog wath Merrylegth.” 

“ Sissy’s father’s dog ! ” 

“ Thethilia’th father’d! old dog. Now, Thquire, I can take 
my oath, from my knowledge of that dog, that that man wath 
dead — and buried — afore that dog come back to me. Joth’- 
phine and Childerth and me talked it over a long time, whether 
I thoud write or not. But we agreed, ‘ No. There’ th nothing 
comfortable to tell : why unthettle her mind, and make her un- 
happy ? ’ Tho, whether her father bathely detherted her*; or 
whether he broke his own heart alone, rather than pull her 


J/A/i!D TIMES. 


■ 251 

down along with him ; never will be known, now, Thquire, till 
— no, not till we know how the dog findth uth out ! ” 

“ She keeps the bottle that he sent her for, to thisdioiir ; and 
she will believe in his affection to the last moment of her life,” 
said Mr. Gradgrind. 

“ It theemth to prethent two thingth to a perthon, don’t it, 
Thquire ? ” said Mr. Sleary, musing as he looked down into the 
depths of his brandy and water : “ one, that there ith a love 
in the world, not all Thelf-intereth after all, but thomething very 
different ; t’other, that it hath a way of ith own of calculating 
or not calculating, whith thomehow or another ith at leatht ath 
hard to give a name to, ath the wayth of the dogth ith ! ” 

Mr. Gradgrind looked out of window, and made no reply. 
Mr. Sleary emptied his glass and recalled the ladies. 

“ Thethilia my dear, kith me and good-bye ! Mith Thquire, 
to thee you treating of her like a thithter, and a thithter that, 
you trutht and honour with all your heart and more, ith a very 
pretty thight to me. I hope your brother may live to be better 
detherving of you, and a greater comfort to you. Thquire, 
thake handth, firtht and latht ! Don’t be croth with nth poor 
vagabondth. People mutht be amuthed. They can’t be al wayth 
a learning, nor yet they can’t be al wayth a working, they an’t 
made for it. You mutht have uth, Thquire. Do the withe 
thing and the kind thing too, and make the beth of uth : not 
the wurth ! 

“ And 1 never thought before,” said Mr. Sleary, putting his 
liead in at the door again to say it, “ that I wath tho muth of a 
Cackler I ” 


CHAPTER IX. 

Final. 

T is a dangerous thing to see anything in the sphere of 
a vain blusterer, before the vain blusterer sees it him- 
self. Mr. Bounderby felt that Mrs. Sparsit had auda- 
ciously anticipated him, and presumed to be wiser than 
he. Inappeasably indignant with her for her triumphant dis- 
covery of Mrs. Pegler, he turned his presumption, on the part 
of a woman in her dependent position, over and over in his 
mind, until it accumulated with turning like a great snowball. 
At last he made the discovery that to discharge this highly con- 



252 


J/ARB TIMES. 


nected female — to have it in his power to say, “ She was a 
woman of family, and wanted to stick to me, but I wouldn’t 
have it, and got rid of her ” — would be to get the utmost possi- 
ble amount of crowning glory out of the connection, and at the 
same time to punish Mrs. Sparsit according to her deserts. 

Filled fuller than ever, with this great idea, Mr. Bounderby 
came in to lunch, and sat himself down in the dining-room of 
former days, where his portrait was. Mrs. Sparsit sat by the 
fire, with her foot in her cotton stirrup, little thinking whither 
she was posting. 

Since the Pegler affair, this gentlewoman had covered her 
pity for Mr. Bounderby with a veil of quiet melancholy and 
contrition. In virtue thereof, it had become her habit to assume 
a woful look ; which woful look she now bestowed upon her 
patron. 

“What’s the matter now, ma’am ?” said Mr. Bounderby, in 
a very short, rough way. 

“ Pray, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, “ do not bite my nose 
off.” 

“ Bite your nose off, ma’am ! ” repeated Mr. Bounderby. 
“ Your nose ! ” meaning, as Mrs. Sparsit conceived, that it was 
too developed a nose for the purpose. After which offensive im- 
plication, he cut himself a crust of bread, and threw the knife 
down with a noise. 

Mrs. Sparsit took her foot out of her stirrup, and said, “ Mr. 
Bounderby, sir ! ” 

“ Well, ma’am ? ” retorted Mr. Bounderby. “ What are you 
staring at ? ” 

“ May I ask, sir,” said Mrs. Sparsit, “ have you been ruffled 
this morning ? ” 

“ Yes, ma’am.” 

“ May I inquire, sir,” pursued the injured woman, “ whether 
/am the unfortunate cause of your having lost your temper?” 

“ Now, I’ll tell you what, ma’am,” said Bounderby, “ I am 
not come here to be bullied. A female may be highly con- 
nected, but she can’t be permitted to bother and badger a man 
in my position, and I am not going to put up with it.” (Mr. 
Bounderby felt it necessary to get on ; foreseeing that if he al- 
lowed of details, he would be beaten.) 

Mrs. Sparsit first elevated, then knitted, her Coriolanian eye- 
brows ; gathered up her work into its proper basket ; and rose. 

“ Sir,” said- she, majestically. “It is apparent to me that I 
am in your way at present. I will retire to my own apartment.’ 

“Allow me to open the door, ma’am.” 


HARD TIMES, 


253 


Thank you, sir ; I can do it for niyself.” 

“You had better allow me, ma’am,” said Bounderby, passing 
her, and getting his hand upon the lock ; “ because 1 can take 
the opportunity of saying a word to you, before you go. Mrs. 
Sparsit, ma’am, I rather think you are cramped here, do you 
know ? It appears to me, that, under my humble roof, there’s 
hardly opening enough for a lady of your genius in other people’s 
affairs.” 

Mrs. Sparsit gave him a look of the darkest scorn, and said 
with great politeness, “ Really, sir ? ” 

“ I liave been thinking it over, you see, since the late affairs 
have happened, ma’am,” said Bounderby; “and it appears to 
my poor judgment — ” 

“Oh! Pray, sir,” Mrs. Sparsit interposed, with sprightly 
cheerfulness, “don’t disparage your judgment. Everybody 
knows how unerring Mr. Bounderby’s judgment is. Everybody 
has had proofs of it. It must be the theme of general conver- 
sation. Disparage anything in yourself but your judgment, 
sir,” said Mrs. Sparsit, laughing. 

Mr. Bounderby, very red and uncomfortable, resumed : 

“It appears to me, ma’am, I say, that a different sort of es- 
tablishment altogether, would bring out a lady of yotir powers. 
Such an establishment as your relation, I^ady Scadgers’s now. 
Don’t you think you might find some affairs there, ma’am, to 
interfere with ? ” 

“ It never occurred to me before, sir,” returned Mrs. Spar- 
sit ; “ but now you mention it, I should think it highly proba- 
ble.” 

“ Then suppose you try, ma’am,” said Bounderby laying an 
envelope with a cheque in it, in her little basket. “ You can 
take your own time for going, ma’am ; but perhaps in the 
meanwhile, it will be more agreeable to a lady of your powers 
of mind, to eat her meals by herself, and not to be intruded 
upon. I really ought to apologise to you — being only Josiah 
Bounderby of Coketown — for having stood in your light so 
long.” 

“ Pray don’t name it, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit. “ If that 
portrait could speak, sir, — but it has the advantage over the 
original of not possessing the power of committing itself and 
disgusting others, — it would testify, that a long period has 
elapsed since I first habitually addressed it as the picture of a 
Noodle. Nothing that a Noodle does, can awaken surprise or 
indignation ; the proceedings of a Noodle can only inspire con- 
tempt.” 


254 


.HARD TIMES. 


Thus saying, Mrs. Sparsit, with her Romon features like a 
medal struck to commemorate her scorn of Mr. Bounderby, 
surveyed him fixedly from head to foot, swept disdainfully past 
him, and ascended the staircase. Mr. Bounderby closed the 
door, and stood before the fire ; projecting himself after his old 
explosive manner into his portrait — and into futurity. 

Into how much of futurity? He saw Mrs. Sparsit fighting 
out a daily fight, at the points of all the weapons in the female 
armory, with the grudging, smarting, peevish, tormenting Lady 
Scadgers, still laid up in bed with her mysterious leg, and gob- 
bling her insufficient income down by about the middle of every 
quarter, in a mean little airless lodging, a mere closet for one, 
a mere crib for two ; but did he see more ? Did he catch any 
glimpse of himself making a show of Bitzer to strangers, as the 
rising young man, so devoted to his master’s great merits, who 
had won young Tom’s place, and had almost captured young 
Tom himself, in the times when by various rascals he was 
spirited away ? Did he see any faint reflection of his own image 
making a vain-glorious will, whereby five-and-twenty Humbugs, 
past five and fifty years of age, each taking upon himself the 
name, Josiah Bounderby of Coketovvn, should for ever dine in 
Bounderby Hall, for ever lodge in Bounderby Buildings, for 
ever attend a Bounderby chapel, for ever go to sleep under a 
Bounderby chaplain, for ever be supported out of a Bounderby 
estate, and for ever nauseate all healthy stomachs, with a vast 
amount of Bounderby balderdash and bluster? Had he any 
prescience of the day, five years to come, when Josiah Boun- 
derby of Coketown was to die of a fit in the Coketown street, 
and this same precious will was to begin its long career of quib- 
ble, plunder, false pretences, vile example, little service and 
much law? Probably not. Yet the portrait was to see it all 
out. 

Here was Mr. Gradgrind on the same day, and in the same 
hour, sitting thoughtful in his own room. How much of futurity 
did he see ? Did he see himself, a white-haired decrepit man, 
bending his hitherto inflexible theories to appointed circum- 
stances ; making his facts and figures subservient to Faith, 
Hope, and Charity ; and no longer trying to grind that Heavenly 
trio in his dusty little mills ? Did he catch sight of himself, 
therefore much despised by his late political associates ? Did 
he see them, in the era of its being quite settled that the national 
dustmen have only to do with one another, and owe no duty 
to an abstraction called a People, “ taunting the honourable gen- 


JIA/^n TIMES, 


255 


tleman ” with this and with that and with what not, five nights 
a-week, until the small hours of the morning? Probably he had 
that much fore-knowledge, knowing his men. 

Here was Louisa on the night of the same day, watching the • 
fire as in days of yore, though with a gentler and a humbler 
face. How much of the future might arise before her vision ? 
Broadsides in the streets, signed with her father’s name, exoner- 
ating the late Stephen Blackpool, weaver, from misplaced sus- 
picion, and publishing the guilt of his own son, with such ex- 
tenuation as his years and temptation (he could not bring him- 
self to add, his education) might beseech ; were of the Present. _ 
So, Stephen Blackpool’s tombstone, with her father’s record of 
his death, was almost of the Present, for she knew it was to be. 
These things she could plainly see. But, how much of the 
Future ? 

A working woman, christened Rachael, after a long illness 
once again appearing at the ringing of the Factory bell, and 
passing to and fro at the set hours, among the Coketown 
Hands ; a woman of a pensive beauty, always dressed in black, 
but sweet-tempered and serene, and even cheerful ; who, of all 
the people in the place, alone appeared to have compassion on 
a degraded, drunken wretch of her own sex, who was some- 
times seen in the town secretly begging of her, and crying to 
her ; a woman working, ever working, but content to do it, and 
preferring to do it as her natural lot, until she should be too 
old to labour any more ? Did Louisa see this ? Such a thing 
was to be. 

A lonely brother, many thousands of miles away, writing, on 
paper blotted with tears, that her words had too soon come 
true, and that all the treasures in the world would be cheaply • 
bartered for a sight of her dear face ? At length this brother 
coming nearer home, with hope of seeing her, and being de- 
layed by illness ; and then a letter, in a strange hand, saying 
“he died in hospital, of fever, such a day, and died in peni- 
tence and love of you : his last word being your name ? ” Did 
Louisa see these things ? Such things were to be. 

Herself again a wife — a mother — lovingly watchful of her 
children, ever careful that they should have a childhood of the 
mind no less than a childhood of the body, as knowing it to be 
even a more beaiitifiil thing, and a possession, any hoarded 
scrap of which, is a blessing and happiness to the wisest ? Did 
Louisa see this ? Such a thing was never to be. 

But, happy Sissy’s happy children loving her ; all children - 


256 


HARD TIMES. 


loving her ; she, grown learned in childish love ; thinking no 
innocent and pretty fancy ever.to be despised; trying hard to 
know her humbler fellow creatures, and to beautify their lives 
of machinery and reality with those imaginative graces and 
delights, without which the heart of infancy will wither up, the 
sturdiest physical manhood will be morally stark death, and the 
plainest national prosperity figures can show, will be the Writing 
on the Wall, — she holding this course as part of no fantastic 
vow, or bond, or brotherhood, or sisterhood, or pledge, or cov- 
enant, or fancy dress, or fancy fair; but simply as a duty to be 
done, — did Louisa see these things of herself? These things 
were to be. 

Dear reader! It rests with you and me, whether, in our two 
fields of action, similar things shall be or not. Let them be I 
We shall sit with lighter bosoms on the hearth, to see the ashes 
of our fires turn gray and cold. 


THE END OF HARD TIMES. 


<• 


REPRINTED PIECES. 


CONTENTS OF REPRINTED PIECES 


-:o:- 


The Long Voyage 

The Begging-letter Writer 

A Child’s Dream of a Star 

Our English Watering-place 

Our French Watering-place 

Bill-sticking 

“Births. Mrs. Meek, of a Son” 

Lying Awake 

The Poor Relation’s Story 

The Child’s Story 

The Schoolboy’s Story. . 

Nobody’s Story 

The Ghost of Art 

Out of Town 

Out of the Season 

A Poor Man’s Tale of a Patent. . 

The Noble Savage 

A Flight 

The Detective Police 

Three “ Detective” Anecdotes. . . 

On Duty with Inspector Field 

Down with the Tide 

A Walk in a Workliouse 

Prince Bull. A Fairy Tale 

A Plated Article 

Our Honorable Friend 

Our SchooL 

Our Vestry 

Our Bore * * * » . . 


259 

268 

275 

277 

286 

298 

309 

313 

'Z20 

329 

333 

342 

347 

353 

359 

367 

372 

378 

387 

405 

413 

425 

434 

440 

445 

454 

459 

466 

472 



THE LONG VOYAGE. 

E^^U|HEN the wind is blowing and the sleet or rain is driv- 
ing against the dark windows, I love to sit by the fire, 
thinking of what I have read in books of voyage and 
travel. Such books have had a strong fascination for 
my mind from my earliest childhood ; and I wonder it should 
have come to pass that I never have been round the world, 
never have been shipwrecked, ice-environed, tomahawked, or 
eaten. 

Sitting on my ruddy hearth in the twilight of New Year’s 
Eve, 1 find incidents of travel rise around me from all the lat- 
itudes and longitudes of the globe. They observe no order or 
sequence, but appear and vanish as they will — “come like 
shadows, so depart.” Columbus, alone upon the sea with his 
disaffected crew, looks over the waste of waters from his high 
station on the poop of his ship, and sees the first uncertain 
glimmer of the light, “rising and falling with the waves, like a 
torch in the bark of some fisherman,” which is the shining star 
of a new world. Bruce is caged in Abyssinia, surrounded by 
the gory horrors which shall often startle him out of his sleep 
at home when years have passed away. Franklin, come to the 
end of his unhappy overland journey — would that it had been 
his last ! — lies perishing of hunger with his brave companions : 
each emaciated figure stretched upon its miserable bed without 
the power to rise : all, dividing the weary days between their 
prayers, their remembrances of the dear ones at home, and 
conversation on the pleasures of eating : the last-named topic 




26 o 


THE LONG VOYAGE, 


being ever present to them, likewise in their dreams. All the 
African travellers, wayworn, solitary and sad, submit themselves 
again to drunken, murderous, man-selling despots, of the low- 
est order of humanity; and Mungo Park, fainting under a tree 
and succoured by a woman, gratefully remembers how his Good 
Samaritan has always come to him in woman’s shape, the wide 
world over. 

A shadow on the wall in which my mind’s eye can discern 
some traces of a rocky sea-coast, recalls to me a fearful story 
of travel derived from that unpromising narrator of such 
stories, a parliamentary blue-book. A convict is its chief 
figure, and this man escapes with other prisoners from a penal 
settlement. It is an island, and they seize a boat, and get to 
the main land. Their way is by a rugged and precipitous sea- 
shore, and they have no earthly hope of ultimate escape, for 
the party of soldiers despatched by an easier course to cut 
them off, must inevitably arrive at their distant bourne long be- 
fore them, and retake them if by any hazard they survive the 
horrors of the way. Famine, as they all must have foreseen, 
besets them early in their course. Some of the party die and 
are eaten ; some are murdered by the rest and eaten. This one 
awful creature eats his fill, and sustains his strength, and lives 
on to be recaptured and taken back. The unrelateable ex- 
periences through which he has passed have been so tremen- 
dous, that he is not hanged as he might be, but goes back to 
his old chained gang-work. A little time, and he tempts one 
other prisoner away, seizes another boat, and flies once more — 
necessarily in the old hopeless direction, for he can take no 
other. He is soon cut off, and met by the pursuing party, face 
to face upon the beach. He is alone. In his former journey 
he acquired an inappeasable relish for his dreadful food. He 
urged the new man away, expressly to kill him and eat 
him. In the pockets on one side of his coarse convict- 
dress, are portions of the man’s body, on which he is regaling ; 
in the pockets on the other side is an untouched store of salted 
l)ork (stolen before he left the island) for which he has no ap- 
petite. He is taken back, and he is hanged. But I shall never 
see that sea-beach on the wall or in the fire, without him, sol- 
itary monster, eating as he prowls along, while the sea rages 
and rises at him. 

Captain Bligh (a worse man to be entrusted with arbitrary 
power there could scarcely be) is handed over the side of the 
Bounty, and turned adrift on the wide ocean in an open boat, 
by order of Fletcher Christian one of his officers, at this very 


THE LONG VOYAGE. 


261 

minute. Another flash of fire, and “ Thursday October Chris- 
tian,” five-and-twenty years of age, son of the dead and gone 
Fletcher by a savage mother, leaps aboard His Majesty’s ship 
Briton, hove to off Pitcairn's Island ; says his simple grace be- 
fore eating, in good English ; and knows that a pretty little 
animal on board is called a dog, because in his childhood he 
had heard of such strange creatures from his father and the 
other mutineers, grown gray under the shade of the Bread-fruit 
trees, speaking of their lost country far away. 

See the Halsewell, East Indiaman outward bound, driving 
madly on a January night towards the rocks near Seacombe, on 
the island of Purbeck ! The captain’s two dear daughters are 
aboard, and five other ladies. The ship has been driving many 
hours, has seven feet water in her hold, and her mainmast 
has been cut away. The description of her loss, familiar to 
me from my early boyhood, seems to be read aloud as she 
rushes to her destiny. 

“About two in the morning of Friday the sixth of January, 
the ship still driving, and approaching very fast to the shore, 
Mr. Henry Meriton, the second mate, went again into the cud- 
dy, where the captain then was. Another conversation taking 
place. Captain Pierce expressed extreme anxiety for the pre- 
servation of his beloved daughters, and earnestly asked the 
officer if he could devise any method of saving them. On his 
answering with great concern, that he feared it would be im- 
possible, but that their only chance would be to wait for morn- 
ing, the captain lifted up his hands in silent and distressful 
ejaculation. 

“ At this dreadful moment the ship struck, with such violence 
as to dash the heads of those standing in the cuddy against the 
deck above them, and the shock was accompanied by a shriek 
of horror that burst at one instant from every quarter of the ship. 

“ Many of the seamen, who had been remarkably inattentive 
and remiss in their duty during the great part of the storm, now 
poured upon deck, where no exertions of the officers could 
keep them while their assistance might have been useful. They 
had actually skulked in their hammocks, leaving the working 
of the pumps and other necessary labours to the officers of the 
ship, and the soldiers, who had made uncommon exertions. 
Roused by a sense of their danger the same seamen, at this 
moment, in frantic exclamations, demanded of heaven and their 
fellow-sufferers that succour which their own efforts timely 
made, might possibly have procured. 


262 


THE LONG VOYAGE. 


“The ship continued to beat on the rocks ; and soon bilging, 
fell with her broadside towards the shore. When she struck, a 
number of the men climbed up the ensign-staff, under an ap- 
prehension of her immediately going to pieces. 

“ Mr. Meriton, at this crisis, offered to these unhappy beings 
the best advice which could l5e given ; he recommended that 
all should come to the side of the ship lying lowest on the 
rocks, and singly to take the opportunities which might then 
offer, of escaping to the shore. 

“ Having thus provided, to the utmost of his power, for the 
safety of the desponding crew, he returned to the round-house, 
where, by this time, all the passengers, and most of the officers 
had assembled. The latter were employed in offering consola- 
tion to the unfortunate ladies ; and, with unparalleled mag- 
nanimity, suffering their compassion for the fair and amiable 
companions of their misfortunes to prevail over the sense of 
their own danger. 

“ In this charitable work of comfort, Mr. Meriton now 
joined, by assurances of his opinion, that the ship would hold 
together till the morning, when all would be safe. Captain 
Pierce, observing one of the young gentlemen loud in his ex- 
clamations of terror, and frequently cry that the ship was part- 
ing, cheerfully bid him be quiet, remarking that though the ship 
should go to pieces, he would not, but would be safe enough. 

“ It is difficult to convey a correct idea of the scene of this 
deplorable catastrophe, without describing the place where it 
happened. The Halsewell struck on the rocks at a part of the 
shore where the cliff is of vast height, and rises almost perpen- 
dicular from its base. But at this particular spot, the foot of 
the cliff is excavated into a cavern of ten or twelve yards in 
depth, and of breadth equal to the length of a large ship. The 
sides of the cavern are so nearly upright, as to be of extremely 
difficult access ; and the bottom is strewed w^th sharp and 
uneven rocks, which seem, by some convulsion of the earth, to 
have been detached from its roof. 

“ The ship lay with her broadside opposite to the mouth of 
this cavern, with her whole length stretched almost from side to 
side of it. But when she struck, it was too dark for the unfort- 
unate persons on board to discover the real magnitude of their 
danger, and the extreme horror of such a situation. 

“ In addition to the company already in the round-house, 
they had admitted three black women and two soldiers’ wives ; 
who, with the husband of one of them, had been allowed to 
cpme in, though the seamen, who had tumultuously demanded 


THE LONG VOYAGE. 


263 


entrance to get the lights, had been opposed and kept out* by 
Mr. Rogers and Mr. Brimer, the third and fifth mates. The 
numbers there were, therefore, now increased to ^near fifty. 
Captain Pierce sat on a chair, a cot, or some other moveable, 
with a daughter on each side, whom he alternately pressed to 
his affectionate breast. The rest of the melancholy assembly 
were seated on the deck, which was strewed with musical in- 
struments, and the wreck of furniture and other articles. 

“ Here also IVfr. Meriton, after having cut several wax- 
candles in pieces, and stuck them up in various parts of the 
round-house, and lighted up all the glass lanthorns he could find, 
took his seat, intending to wait the approach of dawn ; and 
then assist the partners of his dangers to escape. But, observ- 
ing that the poor ladies appeared parched and exhausted, he 
brought a basket of oranges and prevailed on some of them to 
refresh themselves by sucking a little of the juice. At this 
time they were all tolerably composed, except Miss Mansel, 
who was in hysteric fits on the floor of the deck of the round- 
house. 

But on Mr. Meriton’s return to the company, he perceived 
a considerable alteration in the appearance of the ship ; the 
sides were visibly giving way ; the deck seemed to be lifting, 
and he discovered other strong indications that she could not 
hold much longer together. On this account, he attempted to 
go forward to look out, but immediately saw that the ship had 
separated in the middle, and that the forepart having changed 
its position, lay rather further out towards the sea. In such an 
emergency, when the next moment might plunge him into 
eternity, he determined to seize the present opportunity, and fol- 
low the example of the crew and the soldiers, who were now 
quitting the ship in numbers, and making their way to the 
shore, though quite ignorant of its nature and description. 

“ Among other expedients, the ensign-staff had been un- 
shipped, and attempted to be laid between the ship’s side and 
some of the rocks, but without success, for it snapped asunder 
before it reached them. However, by the light of a lanthorn, 
which a seaman handed through the sky-light of the round-house 
to the deck, Mr. Meriton discovered a spar which appeared to 
be laid from the ship’s side to the rocks, and on this spar he re- 
solved to attempt his escape. 

“ Accordingly, lying down upon it, he thrust himself forward ; 
however, he soon found that it had no communication with the 
rock ; he reached the end of it and then slipped off, receiving 
a very violent bruise in his fall, and before he could recover his 


264 


THE LONG VOYAGE. 


legs, he was washed off by the surge. He now supported him- 
self by swimming, until a returning wave dashed him against 
the back part of the cavern. Here he laid hold of a small pro- 
jection in the rock, but was so much benumbed that he was on 
the point of quitting it, when a seaman, who had already gained 
a footing, extended his hand, and assisted him until he could 
secure himself a little on the rock ; from which he clambered 
on a shelf still higher, and out of the reach of the surf. 

“ Mr. Rogers, the third mate, remained with the captain and 
the unfortunate ladies and their companions nearly twenty min- 
utes after Mr. Meriton had quitted the ship. Soon after the 
latter left the round-house, the captain asked what was become 
of him, to which Mr. Rogers replied, that he was gone on deck 
to see what could be done. After this, a heavy sea breaking 
over the ship, the ladies exclaimed, ‘ Oh poor Meriton ! he is 
drowned ! had he stayed with us he would have been safe ! ’ 
and they all, particularly Miss Mary Pierce, expressed great 
concern at the apprehension of his loss. 

“ The sea was now breaking in at the fore-part of the ship, and 
reached as far as the mainmast. Captain Pierce gave Mr. 
Rogers a nod, and they took a lamp and went together into the 
stern-gallery, where, after viewing the rocks for some time, 
Captain Pierce asked Mr. Rogers if he thought there was any 
possibility of saving the girls ; to which he replied, he feared 
there was none ; for they could only discover the black face of 
the perpendicular rock, and not the cavern which afforded 
shelter to those who escaped. They then returned to the 
round-house, where Mr. Rogers hung up the lamp, and Captain 
Pierce sat down between his two daughters. 

“ The sea continuing to break in very fast, Mr. Macmanus, 
a midshipman, and Mr. Schutz, a passenger, asked Mr. Rogers 
what they could do to escape. ‘ Follow me,’ he replied, and 
they all went into the stern-gallery, and from thence to the 
iipper-quarter-gallery on the poop. While there, a very heavy 
sea fell on board, and the round-house gave way : Mr. Rogers 
heard the ladies shriek at intervals, as if the water reached 
them ; the noise of the sea at other times drowning their voices. 

“ Mr. Primer had followed him to the poop, where they re- 
mained together about five minutes, when on the breaking of 
this heavy sea, they jointly seized a hen-coop. The same wave 
which proved fatal to some of those below, carried him and his 
companion to the rock, on which they were violently dashed 
and miserably bruised. 

“ Here on the rock were twenty-seven men ; but it now be- 



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The Long Voyage. — [Page 265.] 









THE LONG VOYAGE, 


265 


ing low water, and as they were convinced that on the flowing 
of the tide all must be washed off, many attempted to get to 
the back or the sides of the cavern, beyond the reach of the 
returning sea. Scarcely more than six, besides Mr. Rogers and 
Mr. Brimer, succeeded. 

“ Mr. Rogers, on gaining this station, was so nearly ex- 
hausted, that had his exertions been protracted only a few min- 
utes longer, he must have sunk under them. He was now pre- 
vented from joining Mr. Meriton, by at least twenty men be- 
tween them, none of whom could move, without the imminent 
peril of his life. 

“ They found that a very considerable number of the crew, 
seamen, and soldiers, and some petty officers, were in the same 
situation as themselves, though many who had reached the 
rocks below, perished in attempting to ascend. They could 
yet discern some part of the ship, and in their dreary station 
solaced themselves with the hopes of its remaining entire until 
day-break ; for, in the midst of their own distress, the suflerings 
of the females on board affected them with the most poignant 
anguish ; and every sea that broke inspired them with terror- 
for their safety. 

‘‘ But, alas, their apprehensions were too soon realised ! 
Within a very few minutes of the time that Mr. Rogers gained 
the rock, an universal shriek, which long vibrated in their ears, 
in which the voice of female distress was lamentably distin- 
guished, announced the dreadful catastrophe. In a few mo- 
ments all was hushed, except the roaring of the winds and the 
dashing of the waves ; the wreck was buried in the deep, and 
not an atom of it was ever afterwards seen.” 

The most beautiful and affecting incident I know, associated 
with a shipwreck, succeeds this dismal story for a winter night. 
The Grosvenor, East Indiaman homeward bound, goes ashore 
on the coast of Caffraria. It is resolved that the officers, pas- 
sengers, and crew, in number one hundred and thirty-five souls, 
shall endeavour to penetrate on foot, across trackless deserts, 
infested by wild beasts and cruel savages, to the Dutch settle- 
ments at the Cape of Good Hope. With this forlorn object 
before them, they finally separate into two parties — never more 
to meet on earth. 

There is a solitary child among the passengers — a little boy 
of seven years old who has no relation there ; and when the 
first party is moving away he cries after some member of it who 
has been kind to him. The crying of a child might be sup- 
12 


266 


rHE LONG VOYAGE. 


posed to be a little thing to men in such a great extremity ; but it 
touches them, and he is immediately taken into that detachment. 

From which time forth, this child is sublimely made a sacred 
charge. He is pushed, on a little raft, across broad rivers, by 
the swimming sailors ; they carry him by turns through the 
deep sand and long grass (he patiently walking at all other 
times) ; they share with him such putrid fish as they find to 
eat ; they lie down and wait for him when the rough carpenter, 
who becomes his especial friend, lags behind. Beset by 
lions and tigers, by savages, by thirst, by hunger, by death in a 
crowd of ghastly shapes, they never — O Father of all mankind, 
thy name be blessed for it ! — forget this child. The captain 
stops exhausted, and his faithful coxswain goes back and is 
seen to sit down by his side, and neither of the two shall be 
any more beheld until the great last day ; but, as the rest go 
on for their lives, they take the child with them. The carpen- 
ter dies of poisonous berries eaten in starvation ; and the stew- 
ard, succeeding to the command of the party, succeeds to the 
sacred guardianship of the child. 

God knows all he does for the poor baby ; how he cheer- 
fully carries him in his arms when he himself is weak and ill ; 
how he feeds him when he himself is griped with want ; how he 
folds his ragged jacket round him, lays his little worn face with a 
woman’s tenderness upon his sunburnt breast, soothes him in his 
sufferings, sings to him as he limps along, unmindful of his own 
parched and bleeding feet. Divided for a few days from the 
rest, they dig a grave in the sand and bury their good friend 
the cooper — these two companions alone in the wilderness — 
and then the time comes when they both are ill and beg their 
wretched partners in despair, reduced and few in number now, 
to wait by them one day. They wait by them one day, they 
wait by them two days. On the morning of the third, they 
move very softly about, in making their preparations for the re- 
sumption of their journey ; for, the child is sleeping by the fire, 
and it is agreed with one consent that he shall not be disturbed 
until the last moment. The moment comes, the fire is dying — 
and the child is dead. 

_ His faithful friend, the steward, lingers but a little while be- 
hind him. His grief is great, he staggers on for a few days, 
lies down in the desert, and dies. But he shall be re-united in 
his immortal spirit — who can doubt it ! — with the child, where 
he and the poor carpenter shall be raised up with the words, 
“ Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have 
done it unto Me.” 


'THE LONG VOYAGE, 


267 


As I recall the dispersal and disa])pearance of nearly all the 
participators in this once famous shipwreck (a mere handful 
being recovered at last), and the legends that were long after- 
wards revived from time to time among the English officers at 
the Cape, of a white woman with an infant, said to have been 
seen weeping outside a savage hut far in the interior, who was 
whisperingly associated with the remembrance of the missing 
ladies saved from the wrecked vessel, and who was often sought 
but never found, thoughts of another kind of travel come into 
my mind. 

Thoughts of a voyager unexpectedly summoned from home, 
who travelled a vast distance, and could never return. 
Thoughts of this unhappy wayfarer in the depths of his sorrow, 
in the bitterness of his anguish, in the helplessness of his self- 
reproach, in the desperation of his desire to set right what he 
had left wrong, and do what he had left undone. 

For, there were many many things he had neglected. Little 
matters while he was at home and surrounded by them, but things 
of mighty moment when he was at an immeasurable distance, 
'riiere were many many blessings that he had inadequately felt, 
there were many trivial injuries that he had not forgiven, there 
was love that he had but poorly returned, there was friendship 
that he had too lightly prized ; there were a million kind words 
that he might have spoken, a million kind looks that he might 
have given, uncountable slight easy deeds in which he might 
have been most truly great and good. O for a day (he would 
exclaim), for but one day to make amends ! But the sun never 
shone upon that happy day, and out of his remote captivity he 
never came. 

Why does this traveller’s fate obscure, on New Year’s Eve, 
the other histories of traveller’s with which my mind was filled 
but now, and cast a solemn shadow over me ! Must I one day 
make this journey ? Even so. Who shall say, that I may not 
then be tortured^by such late regrets : that I may not then look 
from my exile on my empty place and undone work ? I stand 
upon a sea shore, where the waves are years. They break and 
fall, and I may little heed them : but, with every wave the sea 
is rising, and I know that it will float me on this traveller’s 
voyage at last. 


26'8 


THE BEGGING-LETTER WRITER. 


THE BEGGING-LETTER WRITER. 

HE amount of money he anually diverts from whole-' 
some and useful purposes in the United Kingdom, 
would be a set-off against the Window Tax. He is 
one of the most shameless frauds and impositions of 
this time. In his idleness, his mendacity, and the immeasur- 
able harm he does to the deserving, — dirtying the stream of 
true benevolence, and muddling the brains of foolish justice, 
with inability to distinguish between the base coin of distress, 
and the true currency we have always among us, — he is more 
worthy of Norfork Island than three-fourths of the worst char- 
acters who are sent there. Under any rational system, he 
would have been sent there long ago. 

I, the writer of this paper, have been, for some time, a 
chosen receiver of Begging Letters. For fourteen years, my 
house has been made as regular a Receiving House for sucla 
communications as any one of the great branch Post-Offices is 
for general correspondence. I ought to know something of 
the Begging-Letter Writer. He has besieged my door, at all 
hours of the day and night ; he has fought my servant ; he has 
lain in ambush for me, going out and coming in ; he has fol- 
lowed me out of town into the country ; he has appeared at 
provincial hotels, where I have been staying for only a few ' 
'hours ; he has written to me from immense distances, when I 
have been out of England. He has fallen sick ; he has died, ' 
and been buried; he has come to life again, and again de- ^ 
parted from this transitory scene ; he has been his own son, 
his own mother, his own baby, his idiot brother, his uncle, his . 
aunt, his aged grandfather. He has wanted a great coat, to go 
to India in ; a pound to set him up in life for ever ; a pair of 
boots, to take him to the coast of China ; a hat, to get him 
into a permanent situation under Government. He has fre- 
quently been exactly seven and-sixpence short of independence. ] 
He has had such openings at Liverpool — posts of great trust j 
and confidence in merchants’ houses, which nothing but seven-l 
and-sixpence was wanting to him to secure — that I wonder he j 
is not Mayor of that flourishing town at the present moment. I 
The natural phenomena of which he has been the victim, are! 
of a most astounding nature. He has had two children, whoj 
have never grown up ; who have never had anything to cover! 
them at night ; who have been continually driving him mad, byl 



THE BEGGING-LETTER WRITER. 


269 


asking in vain for food ; who have never come out of fevers 
and measles (which, I suppose, has accounted for his fuming 
his letters with 'tobacco smoke, as a disinfectant) ; who have 
never changed in the least degree, through fourteen long re- 
volving years. As to his wife, what that suffering woman has 
undergone, nobody knows. She has always been in’ an inter- 
esting situation through the same long period, and has never 
been confined yet. His devotion to her has been unceasing. 
He. has never cared for himself; he could have perished — he 
would rather, in short — but was it not his Christian duty as a 
man, a husband, and a father, to write begging letters when he 
looked at her? (He has usually remarked that he would call 
in the evening for an answer to this question.) 

He has been the sport of the strangest misfortunes. What 
his brother has done to him would have broken anybody else’s 
heart. His brother went into business with him, and ran away 
with the money ; his brother got him to be security for an im- 
mense sum, and left him to pay it ; his brother would have 
given him employment to the tune of hundreds a-year, if he 
would have consented to write letters on a Sunday ; his brother 
enunciated principles incompatible with his religious views, and 
he could not (in consequence) permit his brother to provide 
for him. His landlord had never shown a spark of human 
feeling. When he put in that execution I don’t know, but he 
has never taken it out. The broker’s man has grown grey in 
possession. They will have to bury him some day. 

He has been attached to every conceivable pursuit. He 
has been in the army, in the navy, in the church, in the law ; 
connected with the press, the fine arts, public institutions, 
every description and grade of business. He has been brought 
up as a gentleman : he has been at every college in Oxford 
and Cambridge, he can quote Latin in his letters (but gener- 
ally mis-spells some minor English word) ; he can tell you 
what Shakespeare says about begging, better than you know it. 
It is to be observed, that in the midst of his afflictions he al- 
ways reads the newspapers ; and rounds off his appeals with 
some allusion, that may be supposed to be in my way, to the 
poj)ular subject of the hour. 

His life presents a series of inconsistencies. Sometimes he 
has never written such a letter before. He blushes with 
shame. That is the first time ; that shall be the last. Don’t 
answer it, and let it be understood that, then, he will kill him- 
self quietly. Sometimes (and more frequently) he has written 
a few such letters. Then he encloses the answers, with an 


270 


THE BEGGING-LETTER WRITER, 


intimation that they are of inestimable value to him, and a re- 
quest that they may be carefully returned. He is fond of en- 
closing something — verses, letters, pawnbrokers’ duplicates, 
anything to necessitate an answer. He is very severe upon 
“ the pampered minion of fortune,” who refused him the half- 
sovereign referred to in the enclosure number two — but he 
knows me better. 

He writes in a variety of styles ; sometimes in low spirits ; 
sometimes quite jocosely. When he is in low spirits, he writes 
down-hill, and repeats words — these little indications being ex- 
pressive of the perturbation of his mind. When he is more vi- 
vacious, he is frank with me ; he is quite the agreeable rattle. 
I know what human nature is, — who better ? Well ! He had 
a little money once, and he ran through it — as many men have 
done before him. He finds his old friends turn away from him 
now — many men have done that before him, too ! Shall he 
tell me why he writes to me ? Because he has no kind of claim 
upon me. He puts it on that ground, plainly ; and begs to ask 
for the loan (as I know human nature) of two sovereigns, to be 
repaid next Tuesday six weeks, before twelve at noon. 

Sometimes, when he is sure that I have found him out, and 
that there is no chance of money, he writes to inform me that 
I have got rid of him at last. He has enlisted into the Com- 
pany’s service, and is off directly — but he wants a cheese. He 
is informed by the serjeant that it is essential to his pros- 
pects in the regiment that he should take out a single-Glouces- 
ter cheese, weighing from twelve to fifteen ])ounds. Eight or 
nine shillings would buy it. He does not ask for money, after 
what has passed ; but if he calls at nine to-morrow morning, 
may he hope to find a cheese ? And is there anything he can 
do to show his gratitude in Bengal ? 

Once he wrote me rather a special letter proposing relief in 
kind. He had got into a little trouble by leaving parcels of 
mud done up in brown paper, at people’s houses, on i)retence 
of being a Railway-Porter, in which character he received car- 
riage money. This sportive fancy he expiated in the House of 
Correction. Not long after his release, and on a Sunday morn- 
ing,-he called with a letter (having first dusted himself all over), 
in which he gave me to understand that, being resolved to earn 
an honest livelihood, he had been travelling about the country 
'with a cart of crockery. That he had been doing pretty well, 
until the day before, when his horse had dropped down dead 
near Chatham, in Kent. That this had reduced him to the un- 
pleasant necessity of getting into the shafts himself, and drawing 


THE BEGGING-LETTER WRITER. 


271 


the cart of crockery to London — a somewhat exhausting pull of 
thirty miles. That he did not venture to ask again for money ; 
but that if I would have the goodness to leave him out a donkey^ 
he would call for the animal before breakfast ! 

At another time, my friend (1 am describing actual experi- 
ences) introduced himself as a literary gentleman in the last ex- 
tremity of distress. He had had a play accepted at a certain 
Theatre — which was really open ; its representation was delayed 
by the indisposition of a leading actor — who was really ill ; and 
he and his were in a state of absolute starvation. If he made 
his necessities known to the Manager of the Theatre, he put it 
to me to say what kind of treatment he might expect? Well ! 
we got over that difficulty to our mutual satisfaction. A little 
while afterwards he was in some other strait — 1 think Mrs. 
Southcote, his wife, was in extremity — and we adjusted that 
point too. A little while afterwards, he had taken a new house, 
and was going headlong to ruin for want of a water-butt. I had 
my misgivings about the water-butt, and did not reply to that 
epistle. But, a little while afterwards, I had reason to feel pen- 
itent for my neglect. He wrote me a few broken hearted lines, 
informing me that the dear partner of his sorrows died in his 
arms last night at nine o’clock ! 

I dispatched a trusty messenger to comfort the bereaved 
mourner and his poor children : but the messenger went so soon, 
that the play was not ready to be played out ; my friend was 
not at home, and his wife was in a most delightful state of 
health. He was taken up by the Mendicity Society (informally, 
it afterwards appeared), and I presented myself at a London 
Pohce-Office with my testimony against him. The Magistrate 
was wonderfully struck by his educational acquirements, deeply 
impressed by the excellence of his letters, exceedingly sorry to 
see a man of his attainments there, complimented him highly 
on his powers of composition, and was quite charmed to have 
the agreeable duty of discharging him. A collection was made 
for the ‘ poor fellow,’ as he was called in the reports, and I left 
the court with a comfortable sense of being universally regarded 
as a sort of monster. Next day, comes to me a friend of mine, 
the governor of a large prison, ‘ Why did you ever go to the 
Police-Office against that man,’ says he, ‘without coming to me 
first ? 1 know all about him and his frauds. He lodged in the 

house of one of my warders, at the very-time when he first wrote 
to you ; and then he was eating spring-lamb at eighteen-pence 
a pound, and early asparagus at I don’t know how much a 
bundle ! ’ On that very same day, and in that very same hour, 


272 


THE BEGGING-LETTER WRITER. 


iny injured gentleman wrote a solemn address to me, demand- 
ing to know what compensation I proposed to make him for his 
having passed the night in a ‘ loathsome dungeon.’ And next 
morning, an Irish gentleman, a member of the same fraternity, 
who had read the case, and was very well persuaded I should 
be chary of going to that Police-Office again, positively refused 
to leave my door for less than a sovereign, and, resolved to be- 
siege me into compliance, literally ‘ sat down ’ before it for ten 
mortal hours. The garrison being well provisioned, 1 remained 
within the walls ; and he raised the siege at midnight, with a 
prodigious alarum on the bell. 

The Begging-Letter Writer often has an extensive circle of 
acquaintance. Whole pages of the Court Guide are ready to 
be references for him. Noblemen and gentlemen write to say 
there never was such a man for probity and virtue. They have 
known him, time outoC mind, and there is nothing they wouldn’t 
do for him. Somehow, they don’t give him that one pound ten 
he stands in need of ; but perhaps it is not enough — they want 
to do more, and his modesty will not allow it. It is to be re- 
marked of his trade that it is a very fascinating one. He never 
leaves it ; and those who are near to him become smitten with 
a love of it, too, and sooner or later set up for themselves. He 
employs a messenger — man, woman, or child. That messenger 
is certain ultimately to become an independent Begging-Letter 
Writer. His sons and daughters succeed to his calling, and 
write begging-letters when he is no more. He throws off the 
infection of begging-letter writing, like the contagion of disease. 
What Sydney Smith so happily called ‘ the dangerous luxury of 
dishonesty’ is more tempting, and more catching, it would seem, 
in this instance than in any other. 

He always belongs to a Corresponding-Society of Begging- 
Letter Writers. Any one who will, may ascertain this fact. 
Give money to day, in recognition of a begging-letter, — no mat- 
ter how unlike a common begging-letter, — and for the next fort- 
night you will have a rush of such communications. Steadily 
refuse to give ; and the begging-letters become Angels’ visits, 
until the Society is from some cause or other in a dull way of 
business, and may as well try you as anybody else. It is of 
little use inquiring into the Begging-Letter Writer’s circum- 
stances. He may be sometimes accidentally found out, as in 
the case already mentioned (though that was not the first in- 
quiry made) ; but apparent misery is always a part of his trade, 
and real misery very often is, in the intervals of spring-lamb and 


THE BEGGING-LETTER WRITER, 


273 

early asparagus. It is naturally an incident of his dissipated 
and dishonest life. 

That the calling is a successful one, and that large sums of 
money are gained by it, must be evident to anybody who reads 
the Police Reports of such cases. But, prosecutions are of 
rare occurrence, relatively to the extent to which the trade is 
carried on. The cause of this, is to be found (as no one knows 
better than the Begging-Letter Writer, for it is a part of his 
speculation) in the aversion people feel to exhibit themselves 
as having been imposed upon, or as having weakly gratified 
their consciences with a lazy, flimsy substitute for the noblest of 
all virtues. There is a man at large, at the moment when this 
paper is preparing for the press (on the 29th of April, 1850), 
and never once taken up yet, who, within these twelvemonths, 
has been probably the most audacious and the most successful 
swindler that even this trade has ever known. There has been 
something singularly base in this fellow’s proceedings : it has 
been his business to write to all sorts and conditions of people, 
in the names of persons of high reputation and unblemished 
honour, professing to be in distress — the general admiration and 
respect for whom, has ensured a ready and generous reply. 

Now, in the hope that the results of the real experience of 
a real person may do something more to induce reflection on 
this subject than any abstract treatise — and with a personal 
knowledge of the extent to which the Begging-Letter Trade has 
been carried on for some time, and has been for some time 
constantly increasing — the writer of this paper entreats the at- 
tention of his readers to a few concluding words. His expe- 
rience is the type of the experience of many ; some on a smaller ; 
some on an infinitely larger scale. All may judge of the sound- 
ness or unsoundness of his conclusions from it. 

Long doubtful of the efficacy of such assistance in any case 
whatever, and able to recall but one, within his whole in- 
dividual knowledge, in which he had the least after-reason to 
suppose that any good was done by it, he was led, last autumn, 
into some serious considerations. The begging-letters flying 
about by every post, made it perfectly manifest. That a set of 
lazy vagabonds were interposed between the general desire to 
do" something to relieve the sickness and misery under which 
the poor were suffering, and the suffering poor themselves. 
That many who sought to do some little to repair the social 
wrongs, inflicted in the way of preventible sickness and death 
upon the poor, were strengthening those wrongs, however inno- 
cently, by wasting money on pestilent knaves cumbering so* 
12 * 


274 


THE BE GGEVG- LETTER' WRITER. 


ciety. That imagination, — soberly following one of these 
knaves into his life of punishment in jail, and comparing it with 
the life of one of these poor in a cholera-stricken alley, or one 
of the children of one of these poor,-|:oothed in its dying hour 
by the late lamented Mr. Drouet, — contemplated a grim farce, 
impossible to be presented very much longer before God or 
man. That the crowning miracle of all the miracles summed 
up in the New Testament, after the miracle of the blind seeing, 
and the lame walking, and the restoration of the dead to life, 
was the miracle that the poor had the Gospel preached to them. 
That while the poor were unnaturally and unnecessarily cut off 
by the thousand, in the prematurity of their age, or in the rot- 
tenness of their youth — for of flower or blossom such youth has 
none — the Gospel was not preached to them, saving in hollow 
and unmeaning voices. That of all wrongs, this was the first 
mighty wrong the Pestilence warned us to set right, and that 
no Post-Office Order to any amount, given to a Begging-Letter 
Writer for the quieting of an uneasy breast, would be present- 
able on the Last Great Day as anything towards it. 

The poor never write these letters. Nothing could be more 
unlike their habits. The writers are public robbers ; and we 
- who support them are parties to their depredations. They 
trade upon every circumstance within their knowledge that 
affects us, public or private, joyful or sorrowful ; they pervert 
the lessons of our lives ; they change what ought to be our 
strength and virtue, into weakness, and encouragement of vice. 
There is a plain remedy, and it is in our own hands. We must 
resolve, at any sacrifice of feeling, to be deaf to such appeals, 
and crush the trade. 

There are degrees in murder. Life must be held sacred 
among us in more ways than one — sacred, not merely from the 
murderous weapon, or the subtle poison, or the cruel blow, but 
sacred from preventable diseases, distortions, and pains. That 
is the first great end we have to set against this miserable 
imposition. Physical life respected, moral life comes next. 
What will not content a Begging-Letter Writer for a week, 
would educate a score of children for a year. Let us give all 
we can ; let us give more than ever. Let us do all we can ; 
let us do more than ever. But let us give, and do, with a high 
purpose ; not to endow the skum of the earth, to its own greater 
corruption, with the offals of our duty. 


A CHILD^S DREAM OF A STAR, 


275 


A CHILD’S DREAM OF A STAR. 



HERE was once a child, and he strolled about a good 
deal, and thought of a number of things. He had a 
sister, who was a child too, and his constant compan- 
ion. These two used to wonder all day long. They 
wondered at the beauty of the flowers ; they wondered at the 
height and the blueness of the sky ; they wondered at the depth 
of the bright water ; they wondered at the goodness and the 
power of God who made the lovely world. 

They used to say to one another, sometimes. Supposing all the 
children upon earth were to die, would the flowers, and the 
water, and the sky, be sorry ? They believed they would be 
sorry. For, said they, the buds are the children of the flower's, 
and the little playful str'eams that gambol down the hill-sides are 
the children of the water ; and the smallest bright specks play- 
ing at hide and seek in the sky all night, must surely be the 
children of the stars ; and they would all be grieved to see their 
playmates, the childr'en of men, no more. 

There was one clear shining star that used to come out in the 
sky before the rest, near the church spire, above the graves. It 
was larger and rnoi'e beautiful, they thought, than all the others, 
and every night they watched for it, standing hand in hand at 
a window. Whoever saw it first, cried out, “ I see the star ! ” 
And often they cried out both together, knowing so well when 
it would rise, and where. So they grew to be such friends with 
it, that, before lying down in their beds, they always looked out 
once again, to bid it good night ; and when they were turning 
round to sleep, they used to say, “ God bless the star ! ” 

But while she was still very young, oh very very young, the 
sister drooped, and came to be so weak that she could no 
longer stand in the window at night ; and then the child looked 
sadly out by himself, and when he saw the star, turned round and 
said to the patient pale face on the bed, “ I see the star ' ” and 
then a smile would come upon the face, and a little weak 
voice used to say, “ God bless my brother and the star ! ” 

And so the time came all too soon ! when the child looked 
out alone, and when there was no face on the bed ; and when 
there was a little grave among the graves, not there before ; and 
when the star made long rays down towards him, as he saw it 
through his tears. 

Now, these rays were so bright, and they seemed to make such 


2J6 


A CHILD'S DREAM OF A STAR, 


a shining way from earth to Heaven, that when the child went to 
his solitary bed, he dreamed about the star ; and dreamed that, 
lying where he was, he saw a train of peoj^le taken up that 
S[)arkling road by angels. And the star, opening, showed him 
a great world of bright light, where many more such bright 
angels waited to receive them. 

All these angels, who were waiting, turned their beaming 
eyes upon the people who were carried up into the star ; and 
some came out from the long rows in which they stood, and 
fell upon the people’s necks, and kissed them tenderly, and 
went away with them down avenues of light, and were so happy 
in their company, that lying in his bed he wept for joy. 

But, there were many angels who did not go with them, and 
among them one he knew. The patient face that once had lain 
upon the bed was glorified and radiant, but his heart found out 
his sister among the host. 

His sister’s angel lingered near the entrance of the star, and 
said to the leader among those who had brought the people 
thither : 

“ Is my brother come ? ” 

And he said “ No.” 

She was turning hopefully away, when the child stretched 
out his arms, and cried “ O, sister, 1 am here ! Take me ! ” 
and then she turned her beaming eyes upon him, and it was 
night ; and the star was shining into the room, making long rays 
' down towards hiin as be saw it through his tears. 

From that hour forth, the child looked upon the star as on 
the home he was to go to, when his time should come, and he 
X thought that he did not belong to the earth alone, but to the 
star too, because of his sister’s angel gone before. 

There was a baby born to be a brother to the child ; and 
while he was so little that he never yet had spoken word, he 
stretched his tiny form out on his bed, and died. 

Again the child dreamed of the opened star, and of the com- 
pany of angels, and the train of people, and the rows of angels 
with their beaming eyes all turned upon those people’s faces. 

Said his sister’s angel to the leader : 

“Is my brother come ? ” 

And he said “ Not that one, but another.” 

As the child beheld his brother’s angel in her arms, he cried, 
“ O, sister, I am here ! Take me ! ” And she turned and 
smiled upon him, and the star was shining. 

He grew to be a young man, and was busy at his books when 
an old servant came to him and said : 


OUR ENGLISH WATERING-PLACE. 



277 


f 

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‘‘ Thy mother is no more. I bring her blessing on her dar- 
ling son ! ” 

Again at night he saw the star, and all that former company. 
Said his sister’s angel to the leader, 

“ Is my brother come? ” 

And he said, “ Thy mother ! ” 

A mighty cry of joy went forth through all the star, because 
the mother was re-united to her two children. And he stretched 
out his arms and cried, “ O, mother, sister, and brother, I am 
here ! Take me ! ” And they answered him “ Not yet,” and 
the star was shining. 

He grew to be a man, whose hair was turning grey, and he 
was sitting in his chair by the fireside, heavy with grief, and with 
his face bedewed with tears, when the star opened once again. 

Said his sister’s angel to the leader, “ Is my brother come ?” 

And he said, “Nay, but his maiden daughter.” 

And the man who had been the child saw his daughter, newly 
lost to him, a celestial creature among those three, and he said, 
“ My daughter’s head is on my sister’s bosom, and her arm is 
round my mother’s neck, and at her feet there is the baby of old 
time, and I can bear the parting from her, God be praised !” 

And the star was shining. 

Thus the child came to be an old man, and his once smooth 
face was wrinkled, and his steps were slow and feeble, and his 
back was bent. And one night as he lay upon his bed, his 
children standing round, he cried, as he had cried so long ago : 

“ I see the star ! ” 

They whispered one another “ He is dying.” 

And he said, “ I am. My age is falling from me like a gar- 
ment, and I move towards the star as a child. And O, my 
Father, now I thank thee that it has so often opened, to receive 
those dear ones who await me ! ” 

And the star was shining ; and it shines upon his grave. 


OUR ENGLISH WATERING-PLACE. 


N the Autumn-time of the year, when the great metrop- 
olis is so much hotter, so much noisier, so much more 
dusty or so much more water-carted, so much more 
crowded, so much more disturbing and distracting in 
all respects, than it usually is, a quiet sea-beach becomes indeed 



278 


OUR ENGLISH WATERING-PLACE. 


a blessed spot. Half awake and half asleep, this idle morning 
in our sunny window on the edge of a chalk cliff in the old- 
fashioned watering-place to which we are a faithful resorter, we 
feel a lazy inclination to sketch its picture. 

The ])lace seems to respond. Sky, sea, beach, and village, 
lie as still before us as if they were sitting for the picture. It is 
dead low- water. A ripple plays among the ripening corn upon 
the cliff, as if it were faintly trying from recollection to imitate 
the sea ; and the world of butterflies hovering over the crop of 
radish-seed are as restless in their little way as the gulls are in 
their lari^er manner when the wind blows. But the ocean lies 
winking in the sunlight like a drowsy lion — its glassy waters 
scarcely curve upon the shore—the fishing-boats in the tiny 
harbour are all stranded in the mud — our two colliers (our water- 
ing-place has a maritime trade employing that amount of ship- 
ping) have not an inch of water within a quarter of a mile of 
them, and turn, exhausted, on their sides, like faint fish of an 
antediluvian species. Rusty cables and chains, ropes and rings, 
undermost parts of posts and piles and confused timber-defences 
against the waves, lie strewn about, in a brown litter of tangled 
sea-weed and fallen cliff which looks as if a family of giants had 
been making tea here for ages, and had observed an untidy cus- 
tom of throwing their tea-leaves on the shore. 

In truth our watering-place itself has been left somewhat high 
and dry by the tide of years. Concerned as we are for its honour, 
we must reluctantly admit that the time when this pretty little 
semi-circular sweep of houses tapering off at the end of the 
wooden pier into a point in the sea, was a gay place, and when 
the lighthouse overlooking it shone at daybreak on coinjiany 
dispersing from public balls, is but dimly traditional now. There 
is a bleak chamber in our watering-place which is yet called the 
Assembly “ Rooms,” and understood to be available on hire for 
balls or concerts ; and, some few seasons since, an ancient little 
gentleman came down and stayed at the hotel, who said he had 
danced there, in byegone ages, with the Honorable Miss Peepy, 
well known to have been the Beauty of her day and the cruel 
occasion of innumerable duels. But he was so old and shrivelled, 
and so very rheumatic in the legs, that it demanded more 
imagination than our watering-place can usually muster, to be- 
lieve him; therefore, except the Master of the “Rooms” (who 
to this hour wears knee-breeches, and who confirmed the state- 
ment with tears in his eyes), nobody did believe in the little lame 
old gentleman, or even in the Honorable Miss Peepy, long 
deceased. 


OUR ENGLISH WATERING-PLACE. 


279 


As to subscription balls in the Assembly Rooms of our vvater- 
ing-[)lace now red-hot cannon balls are less improbable. Some- 
times, a misguided wanderer of a Ventriloquist, or an Infant 
Plienomenon, or a Juggler, or somebody with an Orrery that 
is several stars behind the time, takes the place for a night, and 
issues bills with the name of his last town lined out, and the 
name of ours ignominiously written in, but you may be sure this 
never happens twice to the same unfortunate person. On such 
occasions the discoloured old Billiard Table thatis seldom played 
at (unless the ghost of the Honorable Miss Peepy plays at pool 
with other ghosts) is pushed into a corner, and benches are 
solemnly constituted into front seats, back seats, and reserved 
seats — which are much the same after you have paid — and a 
few dull candles are lighted — wind permitting — and the per- 
former and the scanty audience play out a short match which 
shall make the other most low-spirited — which is usually a drawn 
game. After that, the performer instantly departs with male- 
dictory expressions, and is never heard of more. 

But the most wonderful feature of our Assembly Rooms, is, 
that an annual sale of “ Fancy and other China,” is announced 
here with mysterious constancy and perseverance. Where the 
china comes from, where it goes to, why it is annually put up to 
auction when nobody ever thinks of bidding for it, how it comes 
to pass that it is always the same china, whether it would not 
have been cheaper, with the sea at hand, to have thrown it away 
say in eighteen hundred and thirty, are standing enigmas. Every 
year the bills come out, every year the Master of the Rooms 
gets into a little pulpit on a table, and offers it for sale, every 
year nobody buys it, every year it is put away somewhere until 
next year when it appears again as if the whole thing were a 
new idea. We have a faint remembrance of an unearthly col- 
lection of clocks, purporting to be the work of Parisian and 
Geneve.se artists— chielly bilious- faced clocks, supported on 
sickly white crutches, with their pendulums dangling like lame 
legs — to which a similar course of events occurred for several 
years, until they seemed to lapse away, of mere imbecility. 

Attached to our Assembly Rooms is a library. There is a 
wheel of fortune in it, but it is rusty and dusty, and never turns. 
A large doll, with movable eyes, was put up to be raffled for, 
by five-and twenty members at two shillings, seven years ago 
this autumn, and the list is not full yet. We are rather san- 
guine, now, that the raffle will come off next year. We think 
so, because we only want nine members, and should only want 
eight, but for number two having grown up since her name was 


OUR ENGLISH WATERING-PLACE. 


280 

entered, and withdrawn it when she was married. Down the 
street, there is a toy-shop of considerable burden, in the same 
condition. Two of the boys who were entered for that raffle 
have gone to India in real ships, since : and one was shot, and 
died in the arms of his sister’s lover, by whom he sent his last 
words home. 

'I'his is ihe library for the Minerva Press. If you want that 
kind of reading, come to our watering-place. The leaves of 
the romances, reduced to a condition very like curl-paper, are 
thickly studded with notes in pencil : sometimes complimentary, 
sometimes jocose. Some of these commentators, like commen- 
tators in a more extensive way, quarrel with one another. One 
■' young gentleman who sarcastically writes “ O ! ! ! ” after every 
sentimental passage, is pursued through his literary career by 
another, who writes “Insulting Beast!” Miss Julia Mills has 
read the whole collection of these books. She has left mar- 
ginal notes on the pages, as “ Is not this truly touching ? J. 
M.” “How thrilling I J. M.” “Entranced here by the 
Magician’s potent .spell. J. M.” She has also italicised her 
favourite traits in the description of the hero, as “ his hair, which 
was dark and wavy, clustered in rich profusion around a 
marble broiv, whose lofty paleness bespoke the intellect within.” 
It reminds her of another hero. She adds, “ How like B. L. I 
Can this be mere coincidence ? J. M.” 

You would hardly guess which is the main street of our 
watering-place, but you may know it by its being always stopped 
up with donkey-chaises. Whenever you come here, and see 
harnessed donkeys eating clover out of barrows drawn com- 
pletely across a narrow thoroughfare, you may be quite sure 
you are in our High Street. Our Police you may know by his 
uniform, likewise by his never on any account interfering with 
anybody — especialy the tramps and vagabonds. In our fancy 
shops we have a capital collection of damaged goods, among 
which the flies of countless summers “have been roaming.” We 
are great in obsolete seals, and in faded pincushions, and in 
rickety camp-stools, and in exploded cutlery, and in miniature 
vessels, and in stunted little telescopes, and in objects made of 
shells that pretend not to be shells. Diminutive spades, bar- 
rows, and baskets, are our principal articles of commerce ; but 
even they don’t look quite new somehow. They always seem 
to have been offered and refused somewhere else, before they 
came down to our watering-place. 

Yet, it must not be supposed that our watering-place is an 
empty place, deserted by all visitors except a few staunch per- 


OUR ENGLISH WAI'EKING-PLACE. 


281 


sons of approved fidelity, On the contrary, the chances are 
that if you came down here in August or September, you 
wouldn’t find a house to lay your head in. As to finding either 
house or lodging of which you could reduce the terms, you 
could scarcely engage in a more hopeless pursuit. For all this, 
you are to observe that every season is the worst season ever 
known, and that the householding population of our watering- 
place are ruined regularly every autumn. They are like the 
farmers, in regard that it is surprising how much ruin they will 
bear. We have an excellent hotel — capital baths, warm, cold, 
and shower — first-rate bathing-machines — and as good butchers, 
bakers, and grocers, as heart could desire. They all do busi- 
ness, it is to be presumed, from motives of philanthropy — but 
it is quite certain that they are all being ruined. Their interest 
in strangers, and their politeness under ruin, bespeak their 
amiable nature. You would say so, if you only saw the baker 
helping a new-comer to find suitable apartments. 

So far from being at a discount as to company, we are in 
fact what would be popularly called rather a nobby place. 
Some tip-top “ Nobbs ” come down occasionally — even Dukes 
and Duchesses. We have known such carriages to blaze 
among the donkey-chaises, as made beholders wink. Attend- 
ant on these equipages come resplendent creatures in plush and 
powder, who are sure to be stricken disgusted with the indiffer- 
ent accommodation of our watering-place, and who, of an even- 
ing (particularly when it rains), may be seen very much out of 
drawing, in rooms far too small for their fine figures, looking dis- 
contentedly out of little back windows into bye-streets. The 
lords and ladies get on well enough and quite good-humoredly : 
but if you want to see the gorgeous phenomena who wait upon 
them, at a perfect non-plus, you should come and look at the 
resplendant creatures with little back parlors for servants’ halls, 
and turn-up bedsteads to sleep in, at our watering-place. You 
have no idea how they take it to heart. 

We have a pier — a queer old wooden pier, fortunately with- 
out the slightest pretensions to architecture, and very pictur- 
esque in consequence. Boats are hauled up upon it, ropes 
are coiled all over it ; lobster-pots, nets, masts, oars, spars, 
sails, ballast, and rickety capstans, make a perfect labyrinth of 
it. For ever hovering about this pier, with their hands in their 
l^ockets, or leaning over the rough bulwark it opposes to the sea, 
gazing through telescopes which they carry about in the same 
profound receptacles, are the Boatmen of our watering-place. 
Looking at them, you would say that surely these must be the 


282 


OUR ENGLISH WATERING-PLACE. 


laziest boatmen in the world. They lounge about, in obstinate 
and inflexible pantaloons, that are apparently made of wood, 
the whole season through. Whether talking together about the 
shipping in the Channel, or gruffly unbending over mugs of 
beer at the public-house, you would consider them 'the slow- 
est of men. The chances are a thousand to one that you might 
stay here for ten seasons, and never see a boatman in a hurry. 
A certain expression about his loose hands, when they were not 
in his pockets, as if he were carrying a considerable lump of 
iron in each, without any inconvenience, suggests strength, but 
he never seems to use it. He has the appearance of perpetu- 
ally strolling — running is too inappropriate a word to be thought 
of — to seed. The only subject on which he seems to feel any 
approach to enthusiasm, is pitch. He pitches every thing he 
can lay hold of, — the pier, the pailings, his boat, his house, — 
when there is nothing else left he turns to and even pitches his 
hat, or his rough-weather clothing. Do not judge him by deceit- 
ful cippearances. These are among the bravest and most skillful 
mariners that exist. Let a gale arise and swell into a storm, 
let a sea run that might appal the stoutest heart that ever beat, 
let the Light-boat on these dangerous sands throw up a rocket 
in the night, or let them hear through the angry roar the signal- 
guns of a ship in distress, and these men spring up into activity 
so dauntless, so valiant, and heroic, that the world cannot sur- 
pass it. Cavillers may object that they chiefly live upon the 
salvage of valuable cargoes. So they do, and God knows it is 
no great living they get out of the deadly risks they run. But 
put that hope of gain aside. Let these rough fellows be asked, 
in any storm, who volunteers for the life-boat to save some per- 
ishing souls, as poor and empty handed as themselves, whose 
lives the perfection of human reason does not rate at the value 
of a farthing each ; and that boat will be manned, as surely 
and as cheerfully, as if a thousand pounds were told down on 
the weather-beaten pier. For this, and for the recollection of 
their comrades whom we have known, whom the raging sea 
has engulfed before their children’s eyes in such brave eflbrts, 
whom the secret sand has buried, we hold the boatmen of our 
watering-place in our love and honour, and are tender of the 
fame they well deserve. 

So many children are brought down to our watering-place 
that, when they are not out of doors, as they usually are in 
fine weather, it is wonderful where they are ])ut ; the whole vil- 
lage seeming much too small to hold them under cover. In 
the afternoons, you see no end of salt and sandy little boots 


OUR 'ENGLISH WATERING-PLACE, 


283 

drying on upper window-sills. At bathing-time in the morning, 
the little bay re-echoes with every shrill variety of shriek and 
splash — after which, if the weather be at all fresh, the sands 
teem with small blue-mottled legs. The sands are the chil- 
dren’s great resort. They cluster there, like ants : so busy 
burying their particular friends, and making castles with infinite 
labour which the next tide overthrows, that it is curious to con- 
sider how their play to the music of the sea, foreshadows the 
realities of their after lives. 

It is curious, too, to observe a natural ease of approach that 
there seems to be between the children and the boatmen. 
They mutually make acquaintance, and take individual likings, 
without any help. You will come upon one of those slow 
heavy fellows sitting down patiently mending a little ship for a 
mite of a boy, whom he could crush to death by throwing his 
lightest pair of trousers on him. You will be sensible of the 
oddest contrast between the smooth little creature, and the 
rough man who seems to be carved out of hard-grained wood 
— between the delicate hand expectantly held out, and the 
immense thumb and finger that can hardly feel the rigging of 
thread they mend — between the small voice and the gruff 
growl — and yet there is a natural propriety in the companion- 
ship : always to be noted in confidence between a child and a 
person who has any merit of reality and genuineness : which is x 
admirably pleasant. 

VVe have a preventive station at our watering-place, and 
much the same thing may be observed — in a lesser degree, _ 
because of their official character — of the coast blockade ; a 
steady, trusty, well-conditioned, well-conducted set of men, with 
no misgiving about looking you full in the face, and with a quiet 
thorough-going way of passing along to their duty at night, car- 
rying huge sou-wester clothing in reserve, that is fraught with 
all good prepossession. They are handy fellows — neat about 
their houses — industrious at gardening — would get on with 
their wives, one thinks, in a desert island — and people iq too, 
soon. 

As to the naval officer of the station, with his hearty, fresh 
face, and his blue eye that has pierced all kinds of weather, 
it warms our hearts when he comes into church on Sun- 
day with that bright mixture of blue coat, buff waistcoat, 
black neck-kerchief, and gold epaulette, that is associated in 
the minds of all Englishmen with brave, unpretending, cordial, 
national service. VVe like to look at him in his Sunday state 
and if we were First Lord (really possessing the indispensable 


284 


OUR ENGLISH WATERING-PLACE. 


qualification for the office of knowing nothing whatever about 
the sea), we would give him a ship to-morrow. 

We have a church, by the bye, of course — a hideous temple 
of flint, like a great petrified haystack. Our chief clerical dignitary, 
who, to his honour, has done much for education both in time 
and money, and has established excellent schools, is a sound, 
shrewd, healthy gentleman, who has got into little occasional 
difficulties with the neighbouring farmers, but has had a pestilent 
trick of being right. Under a new regulation, he has yielded 
the church of our watering-place to another clergyman. Upon 
the whole we get on in church well. We are a little bilious 
sometimes, about these days of fraternization, and about 
nations arriving at a new and more unprejudiced knowledge of 
each other (which our Christianity don’t quite approve), but it 
soon goes off, and then we get on very well. 

There are two dissenting chapels, besides, in our small 
watering-place ; being in about the proportion of a hundred 
'and twenty guns to a yacht. But the dissension that has torn 
us lately, has not been a religious one. It has arisen on the 
novel question of Gas. Our watering-place has been con- 
vulsed by the agitation. Gas or No Gas. It was never reasoned 
why No Gas, but there was a great No Gas party. Broadsides 
were printed and stuck about — a startling circumstance in our 
watering-place. The No Gas party rested content with chalking 
“ No Gas ! ” and “ Down with Gas ! ” and other such angry 
war-whoops, on the few back gates and scraps of wall which 
the limits of our watering-place afford ; but the Gas party 
printed and posted bills, wherein they took the high ground of 
proclaiming against the No Gas party, that it was said Let there 
be light and there was light ; and that not to have light (that is, 
gas light) in our watering-place, was to contravene the great 
decree. Whether by these thunderbolts or not, the No Gas 
party were defeated ; and in this present season we have had 
our handful of shops illuminated for the first time. Such of 
the No Gas party, however, as have got shops, remain in op- 
position and burn tallow — exhibiting in their windows the very 
picture of the sulkiness that punishes itself, and a new illustration 
of the old adage about cutting off your nose to be revenged on 
your face, in cutting off their gas to be revenged on their 
business. 

Other population than we have indicated, our watering-place 
has none. There are a few old used-up boatmen who creep 
about in the sunlight with the help of sticks, and there is a 
poor imbecile shoemaker who wanders his lonely life away 


OUR ENGLISH WATERIN.G^PLACE. 



among the rocks, as if he were looking for his reason — which he 
will never find. Sojourners in the neighboring watering-places 
come occasionally in flys to stare at us, and drive away again 
as if they thought us very dull ; Italian boys come, Punch 
conies, the Fantoccini come, the Tumblers come, the Ethiopians 
come ; Glee-singers come at night, and hum and vibrate (not 
always melodiously) under our windows. But they all go soon, 
and leave us to ourselves again. We once had a travelling 
Circus and WombwelFs Menagerie at the same time. They 
both know better than ever to try it again ; and the Menagerie 
had nearly razed us from the face of the earth in getting the 
elephant away — his caravan was so large, and the watering- 
place so small. We have a fine sea, wholesome for all people ; 
profitable for the body, profitable for the mind. The poet’s 
w’ords are sometimes on its awful lips : 

And the stately ships go on 
To their haven under the hill ; 

But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand. 

And the sound of a voice that is still ! 

Break, break, break. 

At the foot of the crags, O sea ! 

But the tender grace of a day that is dead 
Will never come back to me. 

Yet it is not always so, for the speech of the sea is various, 
and wants not abundant resource of cheerfulness, hope, and 
lusty encouragement. And since I have been idling at the win- 
dow here, the tide has risen. The boats are dancing on the 
bubbling waters ; the colliers are afloat again ; the white-bor- 
dered waves rush in ; the children 

Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him 
When he comes back ; 

the radiant sails are giidiiig past the shore, and shining on the 
far horizon ; all the sea is sparkling, heaving, swelling up with 
life and beauty, this bright morning. 


286 


OUR FRENCH WATERING-PLACE. 


OUR FRENCH WATERING-PLACE. . 

AVING earned, by many years of fidelity, the right to 
be sometimes inconstant to our English watering-place, 
we have dallied for two or three seasons with a French 
watering-place : once solely known to us as a town 
with a very long street, beginning with an abattoir and ending 
with a steam-boat, which it seemed our fate to behold only at 
daybreak on winter mornings, when (in the days before conti- 
nental rail-roads), just sufticiently awake to know that we were 
most uncomfortably asleep, it was our destiny always to clatter 
through it, in the coupe of the diligence from Paris, with a sea 
of mud behind us, and a sea of tumbling waves before. In re- 
lation to which latter monster, our mind’s eye now recals a 
worthy Frenchman in a seal-skin cap with a braided hood over 
it, once our travelling companion in the coupe aforesaid, who 
waking up with a ])ale and crumpled visage, and looking rue- 
fully out at the grim row of breakers enjoying themselves fan- 
atically on an instrument of torture called “ the Bar,” inquired 
of us whether we were ever sick at sea ? Both to prepare his mind 
for the abject creature we were presently to become, and also 
to afford him consolation, we replied, “ Sir, your servant is al- 
ways sick when it is possible to be so.” He returned, altogether 
uncheered by the bright example, “Ah, Heaven, but I am al- 
ways sick, even when it is zV/zpossible to be so.” 

The means of communication between the French capital 
and our French watering-place are wholly changed since those 
days ; but, the Channel remains unbridged as yet, and the old 
floundering and knocking about go on there. It must be con- 
fessed that saving in reasonable (and therefore rare) seaweather, 
the act of arrival at our French watering-place from England is 
difficult to be achieved with dignity. Several little circum- 
stances combine to render the visitor an object of humiliation. 
In the first place, the steamer no sooner touches the port, than 
all the passengers fall into captivity ; being boarded by an ~ 
overpowering force of Custom-house officers, and marched into 
a gloomy dungeon. In the second place, the road to this dun- 
geon is fenced off with ropes breast high, and outside those ropes 
all the English in the place who have lately been sea-sick and 
are now well, assemble in their best clothes to enjoy the degra- 
dation of their dilapidated fellow-creatures. “ Oh, my gracious ! 
how ill this one has been !” “Here’s a damp one coming 



OUR FRENCH WATERING-PLACE. 


287 


next!” “ j a pale one ! ” “Oh! Ain’t he green in the 
face, this next one ! ” Even we ourself (not deficient in natural 
dignity) have a lively reinemberance of staggering up this de- 
tested lane one September day in a gale of wind, when we were 
received like an irresistible comic actor, with a burst of laughter 
and applause, occasioned by the extreme imbecility of our legs. 

We are coming to the third place. In the third place, the^ 
captives, being shut up in the gloomy dungeon, are strained, 
two or three at a time, into an inner cell, to be examined as 
to passports ; and across the doorway of communication, stands 
a military creature making a bar of his arm. Two ideas are 
generally present to the British mind during these ceremonies ; 
first, that it is necessary to make for the cell with violent strug- 
gles, as if it were a life-boat and the dungeon a ship going down ; 
secondly, that the military creature’s arm is a national affront, 
which the government at home ought instantly to “ take up.” 
The British mind and body becoming heated by these fantasies, 
delirious answers are made to inquiries, and extravagant actions 
performed. Thus, Johnson persists in giving Johnson as his bap- 
tismal name, and substituting for his ancestral designation the 
national “ Dam ! ” Neither can he by any means be brought to 
recognise the distinction between a portmanteau-key and a pass- 
port, but will obstinately persevere in tendering the one when 
asked for the other. This brings him to the fourth place, in a 
state of mere idiotcy ; and when he is, in the fourth place, cast 
out at a little door into a howling wilderness of touters, he becomes 
a lunatic with wild eyes and floating hair until rescued and soothed. 
If friendless and unrescued, he is generally put into a railway 
omnibus and taken to Paris. 

But, our French watering-place, when it is once got into, is' 
a very enjoyable place. It has a varied and beautiful country 
around it, and many characteristic and agreeable things within 
it. To be sure, it might have fewer bad smells and less decay- 
ing refuse, and it might be better drained, and much cleaner in 
many parts, and therefore infinitely more healthy. Still, it is a 
bright, airy, pleasant, cheerful town ; and if you were to walk 
down either of its three well-paved main streets, towards five 
o’clock in the afternoon, when delicate odours of cookery fill 
the air, and its hotel windows (it is full of hotels) give glimpses 
of long tables set out for dinner, and made to look sumptuous 
by the aid of napkins folded fan-wise, you would rightly judge 
it to be an uncommonly good town to eat and drink in. 

We have an old walled town, rich in cool public wells of wa- 
ter, on the top of a hill within and above the present business- 


288 


OUR FRENCH WATERING-PLACE. 


town ; and if it were some hundreds of miles further from England, 
instead of being, on a clear day, within sight of the grass grow- 
ing in the crevices of the chalk-cliffs of Dover, you would long 
ago have been bored to death about that town. It is more pic- 
turesque and quaint than half the innocent places which tourists, 
following their leader like sheep, have made impostors of. To 
say nothing of its houses with grave courtyards, its queer by- 
corners, and its many-windowed streets white and quiet in the 
sunlight, there is an ancient belfry in it that would have been 
in all the Annuals and Albums, going and gone, these hundred 
years, if it had not been more expensive to get at. Happily it 
has escaped so well, being only in our French watering-place, 
that you may like it of your own accord in a natural manner, 
without being required to go into convulsions about it. We re- 
gard it as one of the later blessings of our life, that Bilkins, the 
only authority on Taste, never took any notice that we can find 
out, of our French watering-place. Bilkins, never wrote about 
it, never pointed out anything to be seen in it, never measured 
any thing in it, always left it alone. For which relief. Heaven 
bless the town and the memory of the immortal Bilkins like- 
wise ! 

There is a charming walk, arched and shaded by trees, on 
the old walls that form the four sides of this High Town, whence 
you get glimpses of the streets below, and changing views of 
the other town and of the river, and of the hills and of the sea. 
It is made more agreeable and peculiar by some of the sol- 
emn houses that are rooted in the deep streets below, burst- 
ing into a fresher existence a-top, and having doors and windows, 
and even gardens, on these rampartsi A child going in at the 
courtyard gate of one of these houses, climbing up the many 
stairs, and coming out at the fourth-floor window, might con- 
ceive himself another Jack, alighting on enchanted ground from 
another bean-stalk. It is a place wonderfully populous in chil- 
dren ; English children, with governesses reading novels as they 
walk down the shady lanes of trees, or nursemaids interchanging 
gossip on the seats; French children with their smiling bonnes 
in snow-white caps, and themselves — if little boys — in straw 
head-gear like bee-hives, work-baskets and church hassocks. 
Three years ago, there were three weazen old men, one bearing 
a frayed red ribbon in his threadbare button-hole, always to be 
found walking together among these children, before dinner- 
time. If they walked for an appetite, they doubtless lived en 
pension — were contracted for — otherwise their poverty would 
have made it a rash action. They were stooping, blear-eyed, 


OUR FRENCH WATERING-PLACE, 


289 


dull old men, slip-shod and shabby, in long-skirted, short- 
waisted coats and meagre trousers, and yet with a ghost of gen-’ 
tility hovering in their company. They spoke little to each 
other, and looked as if they might have been politically discon- 
tented if they had had vitality enough. Once, we overheard 
red-ribbon feebly complain to the other two that somebody, or 
something, was “a Robber;” and then they all three set their 
mouths so that they would have ground their teeth if tfiey had had 
any. The ensuing winter gathered red-ribbon into the great com- 
pany of faded ribbons, and next year the remaining two were there 
— getting themselves entangled with hoops and dolls — familiar 
mysteries to the children — probably in the eyes of most of them 
harmless creatures who had never been like children, and whom, 
children could never be like. Another winter came, and an- 
other old man went, and so, this present year, the last of the 
triumvirate left off walking — it was no good, now — and sat by 
himself on a little solitary bench, with the hoops and the dolls 
as lively as ever all about him. 

In the Place d’ Amies of this town, a little decayed market is 
held, which seems to sliji through the old gateway, like water, 
and go rippling down the hill, to mingle with the murmuring 
market in Ihe lower town, and get lost in its movement and 
bustle. It is very agreeable on an idle summer morning to 
pursue this market-stream from the hill-top. It begins dozingly 
and dully, with a few sacks of corn ; starts into a surprising 
collection of boots and shoes ; goes brawling down the hill in a 
diversified channel of old cordage, old iron, old crockery, old 
clothes, civil and military, old rags, new cotton goods, fiaming 
prints of saints, little looking-glasses, and incalculable lengths 
of tape; dives into a backway, keeping -out of sight for a little 
while, as streams will, or only sparkling for a moment in the 
shajje of a market drinking-shop ; and suddenly re-appears be- 
hind the great church, and shooting itself into a bright con- 
fusion of white capped women, and blue-bloused men, poultry, 
vegetables, fruits, flowers, pots, i)ans, praying-chairs, soldiers, 
country butter, umbrellas, and other sunshades, girl-porters wait- 
ing to be hired with baskets at their backs, and one weazen little 
old man in a cocked hat, wearing a cuirass of drinking-glasses 
and carrying on his shoulder a crimson temple fluttering with 
flags, like a glorified imvior’s rammer without the handle, who 
rings a little bell in all parts of the scene, and cries his cooling 
drink Hola, Hola, Ho-0-0 ! in a shrill cracked voice that some- 
how makes itself heard, above all the chaffering and vending 
hum. Early in the afternoon, the whole course of the stream 
13 


290 


OUR FRENCH WATERING-PLACE. 


is dry. The i:)rayiiig- chairs are i:)ut back in the church, tlie 
umbrellas are folded up, the unsold goods are carried away, the 
stalls and stands disappear, the square is swept, the hackney 
coaches lounge there to be hired, and on all the country roads 
(if you walk about as much as we do) you will see the peasant 
women, always neatly and comfortably dressed, riding home 
with the pleasantest saddle-furniture of clean milk-pails, bright 
butter-kegs* and the like, on the jolliest little donkeys in the 
world. 

We have another market in the French watering-place — that 
is to say, a few wooden hutches in the open street, down by the 
Port — devoted to fish. Our fishing-boats are famous every- 
where ; and our fishing people, though they love lively colours 
and taste is neutral (see Bilkins), are among the most pic- 
turesque people we ever encountered. They have not only a 
Quarter of their own in the town itself, but they occupy whole 
villages of their own on the neighbouring clifts. Their churches 
and chapels are their own ; they consort with one another, they 
intermarry among themselves, their customs are their own, and 
their costume is their own and never changes. As soon as one 
of their boys can walk, he is provided with a long ^bright red 
nightcap ; and one of their men would as soon think of going 
afloat without his head, as without that indispensable append- 
age to it. Then, they wear the noblest boots, with the hugest 
tops — flapping and bulging over anyhow ; above which they 
encase themselves in such wonderful overalls and petticoat 
trousers, made to all appearance of tarry old sails, so addition- 
ally stiffened with pitch and salt, that the wearers have a walk 
of their own, and go straddling and swinging about, among the 
boats and barrels and nets and rigging, a sight to see. Then, 
their younger women, by dint of going down to the sea bare- 
foot, to fling their baskets into the boats as they come in with 
the tide, and bespeak the first fruits of the haul with propitia- 
tory promises to love and marry that dear fisherman who shall 
fill that basket like an Angel, have the finest legs ever carved 
by Nature in the brightest mahogany, and they walk like 
Juno. Their eyes, too, are so lustrous that their long gold ear- 
rings turn dull beside those brilliant neighbours ; and when 
they are dressed, what with these beauties, and their fine fresh 
faces, and their many petticoats — striped petticoats, red petti- 
coats, blue petticoats, always clean and smart, and never too 
long — and their home-made stockings, mulberry-coloured, blue, 
brown, purple, lilac — which the older women, taking care of the 
Dutch-looking children, sit in all sorts of places knitting, knit- 


O UR' FRENCH WA TER TNG- PL A CE. 


. 291 


ting, knitting, from morning till night — and what with their little 
saucy bright blue jackets, knitted too, and fitting close to their 
handsome figures ; and what with the natural grace with which 
they wear the commonest cap, or fold the commonest handker- 
chief round their luxuriant hair — we say, in a word and out of 
breath, that taking all these premises into our consideration, it 
has never been a matter of the least surprise to us that we have 
never once met, in the cornfields, on the dusty roads, by the 
breezy windmills, on the plots^ of short sweet grass overhanging 
the sea — anywhere — a young fisherman and fisherwoman of our 
French watering-place together, but the arm of that fisherman 
has invariably been, as a matter of course and without any 
absurd attempt to disguise so plain a necessity, round the neck 
or waist of that fisherwoman. And we have had no doubt 
whatever, standing looking at their uphill streets, house rising 
above house, and terrace above terrace, and bright garments 
here and there lying sunning on rough stone parapets, that the 
])leasant mist on all such objects, caused by their being seen 
through the brown nets hung across on poles to dry, is, in the 
eyes of every true young fisherman, a mist of love and beauty, 
setting off the goddess of his heart. 

Moreover it is to be observed that these are an industrious 
people, and a domestic people, and an honest people. And 
though we are aware that at the bidding of Bilkins it is our 
duty to fall down and worship the Neapolitans, we make bold 
very much to prefer the fishing people of our French watering- 
])lace — esi:>ecially since our last visit to Naples within these 
twelvemonths, when we found only four conditions of men re- 
maining in the whole city : to wit, lazzaroni, priests, spies, and 
soldiers, and all of them beggars ; the paternal government 
having banished all its subjects except the rascals. 

But we can never henceforth separate our French watering- 
place from our landlord of two summers, M. Loyal Devasseur, 
citizen and town-councillor. Permit us to have the pleasure of 
presenting M. Loyal Devasseur. 

His own family name is simply Loyal ; but, as he is married, 
and as in that part of France a husband always adds to his own 
name the family name of his wife, he writes himself Loyal 
Devasseur. He owns a compact little estate of some twenty 
or thirty acres on a lofty hill-side, and on it he has built two 
country houses which he lets furnished. They are by many 
degrees the best houses that are so let near our French water- 
ing-place ; we have had the honour of living in both, and can 
testify. The entrance-hall of the first we inhabited, was orna- 


292 


OUR FRENCH WATERING-PLACE. 


mented with a plan of the estate, representing it as about twice 
the size of Ireland ; insomuch that when we were yet new to 
the Property (M. Loyal always speaks of it as “ la propriete ") 
we went three miles straight on end, in search of the bridge of 
Austerlitz — which we afterwards found to be immediately out- 
side the window. The Chateau of the Old Guard, in another 
l)art of the grounds, and, according to the plan, about two 
leagues from the little dining room, we sought in vain for a 
week, until, happening one evening to sit upon a bench in the 
forest (forest in the plan), a few yards from the house-door, we 
observed at our feet, in the ignominious circumstances of being 
upside down and greenly rotten, the Old Guard himself: that 
is to say, the painted effigy of a member of that distinguished 
corps, seven feet high, and in the act of carrying arms, who 
had had the misfortune to be blown down the previous winter. 
It will be perceived that M. Loyal is a staunch admirer of the 
great Napoleon. He is an old soldier himself — captain of the 
National Guard, with a handsome gold vase on his chimney- 
piece, presented to him by his company — and his respect for 
the memory of the illustrious general is enthusiastic. Medal- 
lions of him, portraits of him, busts of him, pictures of him, 
are thickly sprinkled all over the property. During the first 
month of our occupation, it was our affliction to be constantly 
knocking down Napoleon : if we touched a shelf in a dark 
corner, he toppled over with a crash ; and every door we 
opened, shook him to the soul. Yet M. Loyal is not a man of 
mere castles in the air, or, as he would say, in Spain. He has 
a specially practical, contriving, clever, skilful eye and hand. 
His houses are delightful. He unites P'rench elegance and 
English comfort, in a happy manner quite his own. He has an 
extraordinary genius for making tasteful little bedrooms in 
angles of his roofs, which an Englishman would as soon think 
of turning to any account, as he would think of cultivating the 
Desert. We have ourself reposed deliciously in an elegant 
chamber of M. Loyal’s construction, with our head as nearly 
in the kitchen chimney-pot as we can conceive it likely for the 
head of any gentleman, not by profession a Sweep, to be. And, 
into whatsoever strange nook M. Loyal’s genius penetrates, it, 
in that nook, infallibly constructs a cupboard and a row of 
pegs. In either of our houses, we could have put away the 
knapsacks and hung up the hats of the whole regiment of 
Guides. 

Aforetime, M. Loyal was a tradesman in the town. You can 
transact business with no present tradesman in the town, and 


OUR FRENCH WATERING-PLACE. 


293 


give your card “ chez M. Loyal,” but a brighter face shines 
upon you directly. We doubt if there is, ever was, or ever will 
be, a man so universally pleasant in the minds of people as M. 
Loyal is in the minds of the citizens of our French watering- 
place. They rub their hands and laugh when they speak of 
him. Ah, but he is such a good child, such a brave boy, such 
a generous spirit, that Monsieur Loyal ! It is the honest truth. 
M. Loyal’s nature is the nature of a gentleman. He cultivates 
his ground with his own hands (assisted by one little labourer, 
who falls into a fit now and then); and he digs and delves from 
morn to eve in prodigious perspirations — “ works always,” as 
he says — but, cover him with dust, mud, weeds, water, any 
stains you will, you never can cover the gentleman in M. Loyal. 
A portly, upright, broad-shouldered, brown-faced man, whose 
soldierly bearing gives him the appearance of being taller than 
he is, look into the bright eye of M. Loyal, sianding before you 
in his working blouse and cap, not particularly well shaved, and, 
it may be, very earthy, and you shall discern in M. Loyal a 
gentleman whose true politeness is in grain, and confirmation 
of whose word by his bond you would blush to think of. 
Not without reason is M. Loyal when he tells that story in his 
own vivacious way, of his travelling to Fulham, near London, 
to buy all these hundreds and hundreds of trees you novv see 
upon the Property, then a bare, bleak hill ; and of his sojourn- 
ing in Fulham three months ; and of his jovial evenings with 
the market-gardeners ; and of the crowning banquet before his 
dej)arture, when the market-gardeners rose as one man, clinked 
their glasses all together (as the custom at Fulham is), and cried, 
“ Vive Loyal ! ” 

M. I^oyal has an agreeable wife, but no family ; and he loves 
to drill the children of his tenants, or run races with them, or 
do anything with them, or for them, that is good-natured. He 
is of a highly convivial temperament, and his hospitality is un- 
bounded. Billet a soldier on him, and he is delighted. Five- 
and-thirty soldiers had M. Loyal billetted on him this present 
Slimmer, and they all got fat and red-faced in two days. It be- 
came a legend among the troops that whosoever got billeted on 
Al., Loyal rolled in clover ; and so it fell out that the fortunate 
man who drew the billet “ M. Loyal Devasseur ” always' leaped 
into the air, though in heavy marching order. M. Loyal cannot 
bear to admit anything that might seem by any implication to 
disparage the military profession. We hinted to him once, that 
we were conscious of a remote doubt arising in our mind^ 
whether a sou a day for pocket-money, tobacco, stockings^ 


294 


OUR FRENCH WATERING-PLACE. 

drink, washing, and social pleasures in general, left a very large 
margin for a soldier’s enjoyment. Pardon ! said Monsieur 
Loyal, rather wincing. It was not a fortune, but — ^ la bonne 
heure — it was better than it used to be ! What, we asked him 
on another occasion, were all those neighbouring peasants, each 
living with his family in one room, and each having a soldier 
(perhaps two) billeted on him every other night, required to 
provide for those ‘soldiers ? Faith ! ” said M. Loyal, reluc- 
tantly ; “ a bed, monsieur, and fire to cook with, and a candle. 
And they share their supper with those soldiers. It is not pos- 
sible that they could eat alone.” — “ And what allowance do they 
get for this ? ” said we. Monsieur Loyal drew himself up taller, 
took a step back, laid his hand upon his breast, and said, with 
majesty, as speaking for himself and all France, “Monsieur, it 
is a contribution to the state ! ” 

It is never going to rain, according to M. Loyal. When it is 
impossible to deny that it is now raining in torrents, he says it 
will be fine — charming — magnificent — to-morrow. It is never 
hot on the Property, he contends. Likewise it is never cold. 
The flowers, he says, come out, delighting to grow there ; it is 
like Paradise this morning ; it is like the Garden of Eden. He 
is a little fanciful in his language : smilingly observing of Madame 
Loyal, when she is absent at vespers, that she is “gone to her 
salvation ” — allee ^ son salut. He has a great enjoyment of 
tobacco, but nothing would induce him to continue smoking face 
to face with a lady. His short black pipe immediately goes 
into his breast pocket, scorches his blouse, and nearly sets him 
on fire. In the Town Council and on occasions of ceremony, 
he appears in a full suit of black, with a waistcoat of magnificent 
breadth across the chest, and a shirt-collar of fabulous propor- 
tions. Good M. Loyal ! Under blouse or waistcoat, he carries 
one of the gentlest hearts that beat in a nation teeming with 
gentle people. He has had losses, and has been at his best 
under them. Not only the loss of his way by night in the Ful- 
ham times — when a bad subject of an Englishman, under pre- 
tence of seeing him home, took him into all the night public- 
houses, drank “ arfanarf ” in everyone at his expense, and finally 
fled, leaving him shipwrecked at Cleefeeway,. which we appre- 
hend to be Ratcliff Highway — but heavier losses than that. 
I^ong ago, a family of children and a mother were left in one of 
his houses, without money, a whole year. M. Loyal — anything 
but as rich as we wish he had been — had not the heart to say 
“ you must go ; ” so they stayed on and stayed on, and paying- 
tenants who would have come in couldn’t come in, and at last 


OUR FRENCH WATERING-PLACE. 


295 


they managed to get helped home across the water, and M. Loyal 
kissed the whole group, and said “Adieu, my poor infants!” 
and sat down in their deserted salon and smoked his pipe of 
peace. — “The rent, M. Loyal?” “Eh! well! The rent!” 
M. Loyal shakes his head. “ Le bon Dieu,” says M. Loyal pres- 
ently, “ will recompense me,” and he laughs and smokes his 
pipe of peace. May he smoke it on the Property, and not be 
recompensed, these fifty years ! 

There are public amusements in our French watering-place, 
or it would not be French. They are very popular, and very 
cheap. The sea-bathing — which may rank as the most favoured 
daylight entertainment, inasmuch as the French visitors bathe 
all day long, and seldom appear to think of remaining less than 
an hour at a time in the water — is astoundingly cheap. Omni- 
buses convey you, if you please, from a convenient part of the 
town to the beach and back again ; you have a clean and com- 
fortable bathing-machine, dress, linen, and all aj^pliances ; and 
the charge for the whole is half-a-franc, or fivcijence. On the 
l)ier, there is usually a guitar, which seems presumptuously 
enough to set its tinkling against the deep hoarseness of the sea, 
and there is always some boy or woman who sings, without any 
voice, little songs without any tune : the strain we have most 
frequently heard being an appeal to “ the sportsman ” not to 
bag their choicest of game, the swallow. For bathing purposes, 
we have also a subscription establishment with an esplanade, 
where people lounge about with telescopes, and seem to get 
a good deal of weariness for their money, and we have also an 
association of individual machine-proprietors combined against 
this formidable rival. M. Feroce, our own particular fiiend in 
the bathing line, is one of These. How he ever came by his 
name, we cannot imagine. He is as gentle and polite a man as 
M. Loyal Devasseur himself; immensely stout withal, and of a 
beaming aspect. M. Feroce has saved so many people from 
drowning, and has been decorated with so many medals in con- 
sequence, that his stoutness seems a special dispensation of 
Providence to enable him to wear them ; if his girth were the girth 
of an ordinary man, he could never hang them on, all at once. 
It is only on very great occasions that M. Feroce displays his 
shining honours. At other times they lie by, with roils of manu- 
script testifying to the causes of their presentation, in a huge 
glass case in the red-sofa’ d salon of his private residence on the 
beach, where M. Feroce also keeps his family pictures, his por- 
traits of himself as he api)ears both in bathing life and in 


OUR FRENCH WATERING-PLACE. 


296 

private life, his little boats that rock by clockwork, and his other 
ornamental possessions. 

Then, we have a commodious and gay Theatre — or had, for 
it is burned down now — where the opera was always preceded 
by a vaudeville, in which (as usual) everybody, down to the 
little old man with the large hat and the little cane and tassel, 
who always played either my Uncle or my Papa, suddenly 
broke out of the dialogue into the mildest vocal snatches, to 
the great perplexity of unaccustomed strangers from Great 
Britain, who never could make out when they were singing and 
when they were talking — and indeed it was pretty much the 
same. But, the caterers in the way of entertainment to whom 
we are most beholden, are the Society of Welldoing, who are 
active all the summer, and give the proceeds of their good 
works to the poor. Some of the most agreeable fetes they 
contrive, are announced as “ Dedicated to the children ; ” and 
the taste with which they turn a small public enclosure into an 
elegant garden beautifully illuminated ; and the thorough-going 
heartiness and energy with which they personally direct the 
childish pleasures ; are supremely delightful. For fivepence a 
head, we have on these occasions donkey races with English 
“Jokeis,” and other rustic sports; lotteries for toys; rounda- 
bouts, dancing on the grass to the music of an admirable band, 
fire-balloons, and fireworks. Further, almost every week all 
through the summer — never mind, now, on what day of the 
week — there is a fete in some adjoining village (called in that 
part of the country a Ducasse), where the people — really the 
people — dance on the green turf in the open air, round a little 
orchestra, that seems itself to dance, there is such an airy motion 
of Hags and streamers all about it. And we do not suppose 
that between the Torrid Zone and the North Pole there are to 
be found male dancers with such astonishingly loose legs, fur- 
nished with so many joints in wrong places, utterly unknown 
to Professor Owen, as those who here disport themselves. 
Sometimes, the fete appertains to a particular trade; you will 
see among the cheerful young women at the joint Ducasse of 
milliners and tailors, a wholsome knowledge of the art of mak- 
ing common and cheap things uncommon and pretty, by good 
sense and good taste, that is a practical lesson to any rank of 
society in a whole island we could mention. The oddest 
feature of these agreeable scenes is the everlasting Roundabout 
(we preserve an English word wherever we co.n, as we are 
writing the English language), on the wooden horses of which 
machine grown-up people of all ages are wound round and 


OUR FRENCH WATERING-PLACE. 


- 297 

round with the utmost solemnity, while the proprietor’s wife 
grinds an organ, capable of only one tune, in the centre. 

As to the boarding-houses of our French watering-place, they 
are Legion, and would require a distinct treatise. It is not 
without a sentiment of national pride that we believe them to 
contain more bores from the shores of Albion than all the clubs 
in London. As you walk timidly in their neighbourhood, the 
very neckcloths and hats of your elderly compatriots cry to you 
from the stones of the streets, “ VVe are Bores — avoid us ! ” 
We have never overheard at street corners such lunatic scraps 
of political and social discussion as among these dear country- 
men of ours. They believe everything that is impossible and 
nothing that is true. They carry rumors, and ask questions, 
and make corrections and improvements on one another, 
staggering to the human intellect. And they are for ever rush- 
ing in to the English library, propounding such incomprehensi- 
ble paradoxes to the fair mistress of that establishment; that we 
beg to recommend her to her Majesty’s gracious consideration 
as a fit object for a pension. 

The English form a considerable part of the population of 
our French watering-place, and are deservedly addressed and 
respected in many ways. Some of the surface-addresses to 
them are odd enough, as when a laundress puts a placard out- 
side her house announcing her possession of that curious British 
instrument, a “Mingle;” or when a tavern-keeper piovides 
accommodation for the celebrated English game of “ Nokeni- 
don.” But, to us, it is not the least pleasant feature of our 
French watering-place that a long and constant fusion of the 
two great nations there, has taught each to like the other, and 
to learn from the other, and to rise superior to the absurd 
prejudices that have lingered among the weak and ignorant in 
both countries equally. 

Drumming and trumpeting of course go on for ever in our 
French watering-place. Flag-flying is at a premium, too ; but, 
we cheerfully avow that we consider a flag a very pretty object, 
and that we take such outward signs of imiocent liveliness to 
our heart of hearts. The people, in the town and in the 
country, are a busy people who work hard ; they are sober, 
temperate, good-humoured, light-hearted, and generally remark- 
able for their engaging manners. Few just men, not immod- 
erately bilious, could see them in their recreations without very 
much respecting the character that is so easily, so harmlessly, 
and so simply, pleased. 


298 


DILL-STICKING. 


BILL-STICKING. 



!F I had an enemy whom I hated — which Heaven for- 
bid ! — and if I knew of something that sat heavy on 
his conscience, I think I would introduce that some- 
thing into a Posting-Bill, and place a large impression 
in the hands of an active sticker. I can scarcely imagine a 
more terrible revenge. I should haunt him, by this means, 
night and day. I do not mean to say that *I would publish his 
secret, in red letters two feet high, for all the town to read : I 
would darkly refer to it. It should be between him, and me, 
and the Posting-Bill. Say, for example, that, at a certain period 
of his life, my enemy had surreptitiously possessed himself of a 
key. I would then embark my capital in the lock business, 
and conduct that business on the advertising principle. In all 
my placards and advertisements, I would throw up the line 
Secret Keys. Thus, if my enemy passed an uninhabited 
house, he would see his conscience glaring down on him from 
the parapets, and peeping up at him from the cellars. If he 
took a dead wall in his walk, it would be alive with reproaches. 
If he sought refuge in an omnibus, the panels thereof would be- 
come Belshazzar’s palace to him. If he took boat, in a wild 
endeavour to escape, he would see the fatal words lurking under 
the arches of the bridges over the Thames. If he walked the 
streets with downcast eyes, he would recoil from the very 
stones of the pavement, made eloquent by lampblack litho- 
graph. If he drove or rode, his way would be blocked up, by 
enormous vans, each proclaiming the same words over and over 
again from its whole extent of surface. Until, having gradually 
grown thinner and paler, and having at last totally rejected 
food, he would miserably perish, and I should be revenged. 
This conclusion I should, no doubt, celebrate by laughing a 
hoarse laugh in three syllables, and folding niy arms tight upon 
my chest agreeably ^o most of the examples of glutted ani- 
mosity that I have had an opportunity of observing in connex- 
ion with the Drama — which, by the bye, as involving a good 
deal of noise, appears to me, to be occasionally confounded 
with the Drummer. 

The foregoing reflections presented themselves to my mind 
the other day, as I contemplated (being newly come to London 
from the East Riding of Yorkshire, on a house-hunting expedi- 
tion for next May), an old warehouse which rotting paste and 


BILL^S TICKING. 


299 


rotting paper had brought down to the condition of an old 
cheese. It would have been impossible to say, on the most 
conscientious survey, how much of its front was brick and mor- 
tar, and how much decaying and decayed plaster. It was so 
thickly encrusted with fragments of bills, that no ship’s keel 
after a long voyage could be half so foul. All traces of the 
broken windows were billed out, the doors were billed across, 
the water-spout was billed over. The building was shored uj) 
to prevent its tumbling into the street ; and the very beams 
erected against it, were less wood than paste and paper, they 
had been so continually posted and rei)osted. The forlorn dregs 
of old posters so encumbered this wreck, that there was no hold 
for new posters, and the stickers had abandoned the place in 
despair, except one enterprising man who had hoisted the last 
masquerade to a clear spot near the level of the stack of chim- 
neys where it waved and drooi)ed like a shattered flag. Below 
the rusty cellar-grating, crum[)led remnants of old bills torn 
down, rotted away in wasting heaps of fallen leaves. Here and 
there, some of the thick rind of the house had peeled off in 
strips, and fluttered heavily down, littering the street ; but, still, 
below these rents and gashes, layers of decomposing posters 
showed themselves, as if they were interminable. I thought 
the building could never even be pulled down, but in one ad- 
hesive heap of rottenness and poster. As to getting in — I don’t 
believe that if the Sleeping Beaut}'- and her Court had been so 
billed up, the young prince could have done it. 

Knowing all the posters that were yet legible, intimately, and 
pondering on their ubiquitous nature, I was led into the reflec- 
tions with which I began this paper, by considering what an 
awful thing it would be, ever to have wronged — say M. Jui.lien 
for example — and to have his avenging name in characters of 
fire incessantly before my eyes. Or to have injured Madame 
Tussaud, and undergo a similar retribution. Has any man a 
self-reproachful thought associated with pills or ointment ? 
What an avenging spirit to that man is Professor Holloway! 
Have I sinned in oil? Cabburn pursues me. Have 1 a dark 
remembrance associated with any gentlemanly garments, bi- 
spoke or ready made ? Moses and Son are on my track. Did 
1 ever aim a blow at a defenceless fellow-creature’s head ? 
That head eternally being measured for a wig, or that worse 
head which was bald before it used the balsam, and hirsute 
afterwards — enforcing the benevolent moral, “Better to be bald 
as a Dutch-cheese than come to this,” — undoes me. Have I 
no sore places in my mind which Mechi touches — which Nic- 


300 


BILLS TICKING. 


OTJ. probes — which no registered article whatever lacerates ? 
Does no discordant note within me thrill responsive to mysteri- 
ous watchwords, as “ Revalenta Arabica,” or, “Number One St. 
Paul’s Church-yard” ? Then may 1 enjoy life, and be happy. 

Lifting up my eyes, as I was musing to this effect, I beheld 
advancing towards me (I was then on Cornhill near to the Roy- 
al Exchange), a solemn procession of three advertising vans, 
of first-class dimensions, each drawn by a very little horse. As 
the cavalcade approached, 1 was at a loss to reconcile the care- 
less deportment of the drivers of these vehicles, with the ter- 
rible announcements they conducted through the city, which, 
being a summary of the contents of a Sunday newspaper, were 
of the most thrilling kind. Robbery, fire, murder, and the ruin 
of a united kingdom — each discharged in a line by itself, like a 
separate broad-side of red-hot shot — were among the least of 
the warnings addressed to an unthinking people. Yet, the 
Ministers of Fate who drove the awful cars, leaned forward 
with their arms upon their knees in a state of extreme lassi- 
tude, for want of any subject of interest. The lirst man, whose 
hair I might naturally have expected to see standing on end, 
scratched his head — one of the smoothest 1 ever beheld — with 
profound indifference. The second whistled. The third 
yawned. 

Pausing to dwell upon this apathy, it appeared to me, as the 
fatal cars came by me, that I descried in the second car, through 
the portal in which the charioter was seated, a figure stretched 
upon the floor. At the same time, I thought I smelt tobacco. 
The latter impression passed quickly from me ; the former re- 
mained. Curious to know whether this prostrate figure was the 
one impressible man of the whole ca])ital who had been strick- 
en insensible by the terrors revealed to him, and whose form 
had been placed in the car by the charioteer, from motives of 
humanity, I followed the procession. It turned into Leadenhall- 
market, and halted at a iiublic-house. Each driver dismounted. 
I then distinctly heard, proceeding from the second car, where 
I had dimly seen the prostrate form, the words : 

“ And a pipe ! ” 

The diiver entering the public house with his fellows, appar- 
ently for purposes of refreshment, I could not refrain from 
mounting on the shaft of the second vehicle, and looking in at 
the portal. I then beheld, reclining on his back upon the floor, 
on a kind of mattrass, a little man in a shooting-coat. The ex- 
clamation, “ Dear me ! ” which irresistibly escaped my lips, 
caused him to sit upright, and survey me. I found him to be a 


BILL-STICKING. 


301 


good-looking little man of about fifty, with a shining face, a 
tight head, a bright eye, a moist wink, a quick speech, and a 
ready air. He had something of a sporting way with him. 

He looked at me, and 1 looked at him, until the driver dis- 
])laced me by handing in a pint of beer, a pipe, and what I un- 
derstand is called “ a screw ” of tobacco — an object which has 
the appearance of a curl-paper taken off the bar-maid’s head 
with the curl in it. 

“ 1 beg your pardon,” said I, when the removed person of 
the driver again admitted of my presenting my face at the por- 
tal. “ But — excuse my curiosity, which I inherit from my 
mother — do you live here?” 

“That’s good, too ! ” returned the little man composedly 
laying aside a pipe he had smoked out, and filling the pipe just 
brought to him. 

“ Oh, you don't liv.e here then ? ” said I. 

He shook his head, as he calmly lighted his pipe by means 
of a German tinder-box, and replied, “ This is my carriage. 
When things are fiat, I take a ride sometimes, and enjoy my- 
self. 1 am the inventor of these wans.” 

His jfipe was now alight. He drank his beer all at once, and 
he smoked and he smiled at me. 

“It was a great idea ! ” said I. 

“ Not so bad,” returned the little man, with the modesty of 
merit. 

“Might I be permitted to inscribe your name upon the tab- 
lets of my memory ? ” I asked. 

“ There’s not much odds in the name,” returned the little 
man, “ — no name particular — I am the King of the Bill-Stick- 
ers.” 

“ Good gracious ! ” said I. 

The monarch informed me, with a smile, that he had never 
been crowned or installed with any public ceremonies, but that 
he was peaceably acknowledged as King of the Bill Stickers in 
right of being the oldest and most respected member of “ the 
old school of bill-sticking.” He likewise gave me to under- 
stood that there was a Lord Mayor of the Bill-Stickers, whose 
genius was chiefly exercised within the limits of the city. He 
made some allusion, also, to an inferior ])otentate, called “ Tur- 
key-legs ; ” but, I did not understand that this gentleman was 
invested with much i)ower. I rather inferred that he derived 
his title from some i)eculiarity of gait, and that it was of an 
honorary character. 

“ My father,” pursued the King of the Bill-Stickers, “ was an 


302 ' BILL-STICKING. 

Engineer, Beadle, and Bill-Sticker to the parish of St. Andrew’s, 
Holborn, in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. 
My father stuck bills at the time of the riots of London.” 

“You must be acquainted with the whole subject of bill- 
sticking, from that time to the present ! ” said I. 

“ Pretty well so,” was the answer. 

“ Excuse me,” said 1 ; “ but I am a sort of collector — ” 

“ Not Income-tax?” cried His Majesty, hastily removing his 
pipe from his lips. 

“No, no,” said I. 

“Water-rate?” said His Majesty. 

“ No, no,” 1 returned. 

“Gas? Assessed? Sewers?” said His Majesty. 

“You misunderstand me,” 1 replied soothingly. “Not that 
sort of collector at all : a collector of facts.” 

“Oh ! if it’s only facts,” cried the King of Bill-Stickers, re- 
covering his good-humour, and banishing the great mistrust that 
had suddenly fallen uj^on him, “come in, and welcome ! If it 
had been income, or winders, I think I should have pitched you 
out of the wan, upon my soul ! ” 

Readily complying with the invitation, I squeezed myself in 
at the small aperture. His Majest}^, graciously handing me a 
little three-legged stool on which I took my seat in a corner, 
inquired if I smoked. 

“ I do ; — that is, I can,” I answered. 

“Pipe and a screw!” said His Majesty to the attendant 
charioteer. “Do you [)refer a dry smoke, or do you moisten 
it?” 

As unmitigated tobacco produces most disturbing effects 
upon my system (indeed, if I had perfect moral courage, I 
doubt if I should smoke at all, under any circumstances), I 
advocated moisture, and begged the Sovereign of the Bill-Stick- 
ers to name his usual liquor, and to concede to me the privilege 
of paying for it. After some delicate reluctance on his part, 
we were provided, through the instrumentality of the attend- 
ant charioteer, with a can of cold rum-and-water, favoured with 
sugar and lemon. We were also furnished with a tumbler, and 
I was provided with a pipe. His Majesty, then, observing that 
we might combine business with conversation, gave the word 
for the car to proceed ; and, to my great delight, we jogged 
away at a foot pace. 

I say to my great delight, because I am very fond of novelty, 
and it was a new sensation to be jolting through the tumult of 
the city in that secluded Temple, partly open to the sky, sur- 


' BILL-STICKING. 


303 


rounded by the roar without, and seeing nothing but the clouds. 
Occasionally, blows from whips fell heavily on the Temple’s 
walls, when by stopping up the road longer than usual, we 
irritated carters and coachmen to madness ; but, they fell harm- 
less ui)on us within and disturbed not the serenity of our 
l)eaceful retreat. As I looked upward, I felt, I should imagine, 
like the Astronomer Royal. I was enchanted by the contrast 
between the freezing nature of our external mission on the 
,blood of the populace, and the perfect composure reigning 
within those sacred precincts : where His Majesty, reclining 
easily on his left arm, smoked his pipe and drank his rum-and- 
water from his own side of the tumbler, which stood imjjartially 
between us. As I looked down from the clouds and caught 
his royal eye, he understood my retlections. “I have an idea,” 
he observed, with an upward glance, “ of training scarlet run- 
ners across in the season, — iDaking a arbor of it, — and some- 
times taking tea in the same, according to the song.” 

1 nodded approval. 

“ x\nd here you repose and think ? ” said I. 

“ And think,” said he, “ of posters — walls — and hoardings.” 

We were both silent, contemjdating the vastness of the 
subject. I remembered a surprising fancy of dear Thomas 
Hood’s, and wondered whether this monarch ever sighed to 
repair to the great wall of China, and stick bills all over it. 

“And so,” said he, rousing himself, “it’s facts as you 
collect ?” 

“ Facts,” said I. 

“ The facts of bill-sticking,” pursued His Majesty, in a 
benignant manner, “ as known to myself air as the following. 
When my father was Engineer, Beadle, and Bill-Sticker to the 
parish of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, he employed women to post 
bills for him. He employed women to post bills at the time of 
the riots' of London. He died at the age of seventy-five year, 
and was buried by the murdered hdiza Grimwood, over in the 
Waterloo-road.” 

As this was somewhat in the nature of a royal speech, I 
listened with deference and silently. His Majesty, taking a 
scroll from liis pocket, proceeded, with great distinctness, to 
pour out the following flood of information : — 

“ ‘ The bills being at that period mostly proclamations and 
declarations, and which were only a demy size, the manner of 
posting the bills (as they did not use brushes) was by means of 
a piece of wood which" they called a ‘ dabber.’ Thus things 
continued till such time as the State Lottery was passed, and 


304 


BILL-STICKING, 


then the printers began to print larger bills, and men were 
employed instead of women, as the State Lottery Commission- 
ers then began to send men all over England to post bills, and 
would keep them out six or eight months at a time, and they 
were called by the London bill-stickers ‘ trampcrs^ their wages 
at the time being ten shillings per day, besides expenses. -They 
used sometimes to be stationed in large towns for five or six 
months together, distributing the schemes to all the houses in 
town. And then there were more caricature wood-block en- 
gravings for posting-bills than there are at the present time, 
the principal printers, at that time, of posting-bills being 
Messrs. Evans and Ruffy, of Budge-row ; Idioroughgood and 
\Vhiting, of the present day ; and Messrs. Gye and Balne, 
Gracechurch Street, City. The largest bills printed at that 
period v/ere a two-sheet double crown ; and when they com- 
menced printing four-sheet bills, two bill-stickers would work 
together. They had no settled wages per week, but had a 
fixed price for their work, and the London bill-stickers, during 
a lottery week, have been known to earn, each, eight or nine 
pounds per week, till the day of drawing ; likewise the men 
who carried boards in the streets used to have one pound per, 
week, and the bill-stickers at that time would not allow any one 
to wilfully cover or destroy their bills, as they had a society 
amongst themselves, and very frequently dined together at some 
public-house where they used to go of an evening to have their 
work delivered out untoe ’em.’ ” 

All this His Majesty delivered in a gallant manner ; posting 
it, as it were, before me, in a great proclamation. I took ad- 
vantage of the pause he now made, to inquire what a “ two- 
sheet double crown” might express? 

“A two-sheet double crown” replied the King, “is a bill 
thirty-nine inches wide by thirty inches high.” 

“ Is it possible,” said I, my mind reverting to the gigantic 
admonitions we were then displaying to the multitude — which 
were as infants to some of the posting-bills on the rotten old 
warehouse — “ that some few years ago the largest bill was no 
larger than that ? ” 

“ The fact,” returned the King, “ is undoubtedly so.” Here 
he instantly rushed again into the scroll. 

“‘Since the abolishing of the State Lottery all that good 
feeling has gone, and nothing but jealousy exists, through the 
rivalry of each other. Several bill-sticking companies have 
started, but have failed. The first party that started a company 
was twelve years ago ; but what was left of the old school and 


BILL-STICKING, 


305 


their dependents joined together and opposed them. And for 
some time we were quiet again, till a printer of Hatton Garden 
formed a company by hiring the sides of houses ; but he was 
not supported by the public, and he left his wooden frames 
fixed up for rent. The last company that started took advan- 
tage of the New Police Act, and hired of Messrs. Grisell and 
Peto the hoarding of Trafalgar Square, and established a bill- 
sticking office in Cursitor-street, Chancery-lane, and engaged 
some of the new bill-stickers to do their work, and for a time 
got the half of all our work, and with such spirit did they carry 
on their opposition towards us, that they used to give us in 
charge before the magistrate, and get us fined ; but they found 
it so expensive, that they could not keep it up, for they were 
always employing a lot of ruffians from the Seven Dials to 
come and fight us ; and on one occasion the old bill-stickers 
went to Trafalgar Square to attempt to post bills, when they 
were given in custody by the watchman in their employ, and 
fined at Queen Square five pounds, as they would not allow 
any of us to speak in the office ; but when they were gone we 
had an interview with the magistrate, who mitigated the fine to 
fifteen shillings. During the time the men were waiting for 
the fine, this company started off to a public-house that we were 
in the habit of using, arid waited for us coming back, where a 
fighting scene took place that beggars description. Shortly 
after this, the principal one day came and shook hands with us, 
and acknowledged that he had broken up the company, and 
that he himself had lost five hundred pound in trying to over- 
throw us. We then took possession of the hoarding in Tra- 
falgar Square ; but Messrs. Grisell and Peto would not allow 
us to post our bills on the said hoarding without paying them — 
and from first to last we paid upwards of two hundred pounds 
for that hoarding, and likewise the hoarding of the Reform 
Club-house, Pall Mall.’ ” 

His Majesty, being now completely out of breath, laid down 
his scroll (which he appeared to have finished), puffed at his 
pipe, and took some rum-and-water. I embraced the oppor- 
tunity of asking how many divisions the art and mystery of 
bill-sticking comprised ? He replied, three — auctioneers’ bill- 
sticking, theatrical bill-sticking, general bill-sticking. 

“The auctioneers’ porters,” said the King, “who do their 
bill-sticking, are mostly respectable and intelligent, and general- 
ly well paid for their work, whether in town or country. The 
price paid by the principal auctioneers for country work is 
nine shillings per day’s work, one shilling for lodging, and 


3o6 


BILL-STICKING. 


one for paste. Town work is five shillings a day, including 
paste.” 

“ Town work must be rather hot-work,” said I, “ if there be 
many of those fighting scenes that beggars description, among 
the bill-stickers ? ” 

‘‘Well,” replied the King, “ I an’t a stranger, I assure you, to 
black eyes ; a bill-sticker ought to know how to handle his 
fists a bit. As to that row I have mentioned, that grew out 
of competition, conducted in an uncompromising spirit. Be- 
sides a man in a horse-and-shay continually following us about, 
the company had a watchman on duty, night and day, to pre- 
vent us sticking bills upon the hoarding in Trafalgar Square. 
We went there, early one morning, to stick bills and to black- 
wash their bills if we were interfered with. We were inter- 
fered with, and I gave the word for laying on the wash. It 
was laid on — pretty brisk — and we were all taken to Queen 
Square : but they couldn’t fine ine. I knew that,” — with 
a bright smile — “ I’d only given directions — I was only the 
General.” 

Charmed with this monarch’s affability, I inquired if he had 
ever hired a hoarding himself. , 

“Hired a large one,” he replied, “opposite the T.yceum 
Theatre, when the buildings was there. Paid thirty pound for 
it; let out places on it, and called it ‘The External Paper- 
Hanging Station.’ But it didn’t answer. Ah !” said His Maj- 
esty thoughtfully, as he filled the glass, “ Bill-stickers have a 
deal to contend with. The bill-sticking clause was got into 
the Police Act by a member of parliament that employed me 
at his election. The clause is pretty stift* respecting where bills 
go ; but he didn’t mind where his bills went. It was all right 
enough, so long as they was his bills ! ” 

Fearful that I observed a shadow of misanthropy on the 
King’s cheerful face, I asked whose ingenious invention that 
was, which I greatly admired, of sticking bills under the arches 
of the bridges. 

“ Mine !” said His Majesty, “ I was the first that ever stuck 
a bill under a bridge ! Imitators soon rose up, of course. 
When don’t they? But they stuck ’em at low-water, and 
the tide canje and swept the bills clean away. I knew that ! ” 
The King laughed. 

“ What may be the name of that instrument, like an immense 
fishing-rod,” I inquired, “ with which bills are posted on high 
places?” 

“ The joints,” returned His Majesty. “ Now, we use the 


BILL-STICKING, 


307 


joints where formerly we used ladders — as they do still in coun- 
try places. Once, when Madame” (Vestris, understood) “was 
playing in Liverpool, another bill-sticker and me were at it to- 
gether on the wall outside the Clarence Dock — me with the 
joints — him on a ladder. Lord ! I had my bill up, right over 
his head, yards above him, ladder and all, while he was crawl- 
ing to his work. The people going in and out of the docks, 
stood and laughed ! — It’s about thirty years since the joints come 
in.” 

“ Are there any bill-stickers who can’t read ? ” I took the 
liberty of inquiring. 

“ Some,” said the King. “ But they know which is the 
right side iqfards of their work. They keep it as it’s given out 
to ’em. I have seen a bill or so stuck wrong side up’ards. 
But it’s very rare.” 

Our discourse sustained some interruption at this point, by 
the procession of cars occasioning a stoppage of about three 
quarters of a mile in length, as nearly as 1 could judge. His 
Majesty, however, entreating me not to be discomposed by the 
contingent uproar, smoked with great placidity, and surveyed 
I the firmament. 

When we were again in motion, I begged to be informed 
i what was the largest poster His Majesty had ever seen. The 
; King replied, “ A thirty-six sheet poster.” I gathered, also, 

^ that there were about a hundred and fifty bill-stickers in Lon- 
j don, and that His Majesty considered an average hand equal to 
! the i)osting of one hundred bills (single sheets) in a day. The 
I King was of opinion, that, although posters had much increased 
i in size, they had not increased in number ; as the abolition of 
the State Lotteries has occasioned a great falling off, especially 
in the country. Over and above which change, I bethought 
; myself that the custom of advertising in newpapers had greatly 
; increased. The completion of many London improvements, 
i as Trafalgar-square (1 particularly observed the singularity of 
! His Majesty’s calling that an improvement), the Royal Ex- 
change, &c., had of late years reduced the number of advan- 
tageous posting-places. Bill-stickers at present rather confine 
themselves to districts, than to particular descriptions of work. 
One man would strike over Whitechapel,, another would take 
round Houndsditch, Shoreditch, and the City Road ; one (the 
King said) would stick to the Surrey side ; another would make 
. a beat of the West-end. 

His Majesty remarked, with some approach to severity, on 
) the neglect of delicacy and taste, gradually introduced into the 


BILL-STICKING. 


308 

trade by the new school : a profligate and inferior race of im- 
postors who took jobs at almost any price, to the detriment of 
the old school, and the confusion of their own misguided em- 
ployers. He considered that the trade was overdone with com- 
petition, and observed, speaking of his subjects, “ There are too 
many of ’em.” He believed, still, that things were a little better 
than they had been ; adducing, as a proof, the fact that par- 
ticular posting places were now reserved, by common consent, 
for particular posters ; those places, however, must be regu- 
larly occupied by those posters, or, they lapsed and fell into 
other hands. It was of no use giving a man a Drury Lane bill 
this week and not next. Where was it to go ? He was of 
opinion that going to the expense of putting up your own board 
on which your sticker could display your own bills, was the only 
complete way of posting yourself at the present time ; but, 
even to effect this, on payment of a shilling a week to the keep- 
ers of steamboat piers and other such places, you must be able, 
besides, to give orders for theatres and public exhibitions, or 
you would be sure to be cut out by somebody. His Majesty 
regarded the passion for orders, as one of the most inappeas- 
able appetites of human nature. If there were a building, or if 
there were repairs, going on, anywhere, you could generally stand 
something and make it right with the foreman of the works ; but, 
orders would be expected from you, and the man who could 
give the most orders was the man who would come off best. 
There was this other objectionable point, in orders, that work- 
men sold them for drink, and often sold them to persons who 
were likewise troubled with the weakness of thirst : which led 
(His Majesty said) to the presentation of your orders at Thea- 
tre doors, by individuals who were “too shakery” to derive in- 
tellectual profit from the entertainments, and who brought a 
scandal on you. Finally, His Majesty said that you could 
hardly put too little in a poster ; what you wanted was, two or 
three good catch-lines for the eye to rest on — then, leave it 
alone — and there you were ! 

These are the minutes of my conversation with His Majesty, 
as I noted them down shortly afterwards. I am not aware that 
I have been betrayed into any alteration or suppression. The 
manner of the King was frank in the extreme ; and he seemed 
to me to avoid, at once that slight tendency to repetition which 
may have been observed in the conversation of His Majesty 
King George the Third, and that slight under-current of ego- 
tism which the curious observer may perhaps detect in the con- 
versation of Napoleon Bonaparte. 


BIRTHS. MRS. MEEK, OF A SON» 


309 


I must do the King the justice to say that it was I, and not 
he, who closed the dialogue. At this juncture, 1 became the 
subject of a remarkable optical delusion ; the legs of my stool 
appeared to me to double up ; the car to spin round and 
round with great violence ; and a mist to arise between myself 
and His Majesty. In addition to these sensations, I felt ex- 
tremely unwell. I refer these unpleasant effects, either to the 
l)aste with which the posters were affixed to the van, which 
may have contained some small portion of arsenic ; or, to the 
printer’s ink, which may have contained some equally deleterious 
ingredient. Of this, I cannot be sure. I am only sure that I 
was not affected, either by the smoke, or the rum-and-water. 
I was assisted out of the vehicle, in a state of mind wliich I 
have only experienced in two other places — I allude to the. Pier 
at Dover, and to the corresponding portion of the town of Ca- 
lais — and sat upon a door-step until I recovered. The pro- 
cession had then disappeared. I have since looked anxiously 
for the King in several other cars, but I have not yet had the 
happiness of seeing His Majesty. 


‘‘BIRTHS. MRS. MEEK, OF A SON.” 

Y name is Meek. I am, in fact, Mr. Meek. That son 
is mine, and Mrs. Meek’s. When I saw the announce- 
ment in the Times, I dropped the paper. I had put 
it in, myself, and paid for it, but it looked so noble 
that it overpowered me. 

As soon as I could compose my feelings, I took the paper 
up to Mrs. Meek’s bedside. “ Maria Jane,” said I (I allude to 
Mrs. Meek), “ you are now a public character.” We read the 
review of our child, several times, with feelings of the strongest 
emotions ; and I sent the boy who cleaned the boots and shoes, 
to the office for fifteen co[>ies. No reduction was made on 
taking that quantity. 

It is scarcely necessary for me to say, that our child had been 
expected. In fact, it had been expected, with comparative 
confidence, for some months. Mrs. Meek’s mother, who re- 
sides with us— of the name of Bigby— had made every prepar- 
ation for its admission to our circle. 

I hope and believe I am a quiet man. I will go farther. I 
knoiv I am a qufet man. My constitution is tremulous, my 



310 


BIRTHS. MRS. ME EH, OF A SON.'' 


voice was never loud, and in point of stature, I have l')een from 
infancy, small. 1 have the greatest respect for Maria Jane’s 
mamma. She is a most remarkable woman. 1 honour Maria 
Jane’s mamma. In my opinion she would storm a town, single- 
handed, with a hearth-broom, and carry it. 1 have never known 
her to yield any point whatever, to mortal man. She is calcu- 
lated to terrify the stoutest heart. 

Still — but I will not anticipate. 

The first intimation I had, of any preparations being in prog- 
ress, on the part of Maria Jane’s mamma, was one afternoon, 
several months ago. I came home earlier than usual from the 
office, and, proceeding into the dining room, found an obstruc- 
tion behind the door, which ]:)revented it from opening freely. 
It was an obstruction of a soft nature. On looking in 1 found 
it to be a female. 

The female in question stood in the corner behind the door, 
consuming Sherry Wine. From the nutty smell of that bever- 
age pervading the apartment, I have no doubt she was consum- 
ing a second glassful. She wore a black bonnet of large di- 
mensions, and was copious in figure. I’he expression of her 
countenance was severe and discontented. The words to which 
she gave utterance on seeing me, were these, “Oh git along 
with you. Sir, if jw/ please ; me and Mrs. Bigby don’t want no 
male parties here ! ” 

That female was Mrs. Prodgit. 

I immediately withdrew, of course. I was rather hurt, but I 
made no remark. Whether it was that I showed a lowness of 
spirits after dinner, in consequence of feeling that I seemed to 
intrude, I cannot say. But, Maria Jane’s mamma said to me on 
her retiring for the night, in a low distinct voice, and with a 
look of reproach that completely subdued me : “ George Meek, 
Mrs. Prodgit is your wife’s nurse ! ” 

I bear no ill-will towards Mrs. Prodgit. Is it likely that I, 
writing this with tears in my eyes, should be capable of deliber- 
ate animosity towards a female, so essential to the welfare of 
Maria Jane ? I am willing to admit that Fate may have been 
to blame, and not Mrs. Prodgit ; but, it is undeniably true, that 
the latter female brought desolation and devastation into my 
lowly dwelling. 

We were happy after her first appearance : we were some- 
times exceedingly so. But, whenever the parlor door was 
opened, and “Mrs. Prodgit!” announced (and she was very 
often announced), misery ensued. I could not bear Mrs. Prod- 
git’s look. I felt that 1 was far from v/anted,^and had no busi- 


BIRTHS. MRS. MEEH, OF A SOH.^^ 31I 

ness to exist in Mrs. Prodgit’s presence. Between Maria Jane’s 
mamma and Mrs. Prodgit, there was a dreadful, secret under- 
standing — a dark mystery and conspiracy, pointing me out as a 
being to be shunned. 1 appeared to have done something that 
was evil. Whenever Mrs. Prodgit called, after dinner, I retired 
to my dressing-room — where the temperature is very low, in- 
deed, in the wintery time of the year — and sat looking at my 
frosty breath as it rose before me, and at my rack of boots : a 
serviceable article of furniture, but never, in my opinion, an ex- 
hilarating object. The length of the councils that were held 
with Mrs. Prodgit, under these circumstances, I will not at- 
tempt to describe. I will merely remark, that Mrs. Prodgit al- 
ways consumed Sherry Wine while the deliberations were in 
progress ; that they always ended in Maria Jane’s being in 
wretched spirits on the sofa ; and that Maria Jane’s mamma al- 
ways received me, when I was recalled, with a look of desolate 
triumph that too plainly said, George Meek ! You see 

my child, Maria Jane a ruin, and 1 hope you are satisfied !” 

1 pass, generally, over the period that intervened between 
the day when Mrs. Prodgit entered her protest against male 
parties, and the ever-memorial midnight when I brought her to 
my unobtrusive home in a cab, with an extremely large box on 
the roof and a bundle, a bandbox, and a basket, between the 
driver’s legs. 1 have no objection to Mrs. Prodgit (aided and 
abetted by Mrs. Bigby, who I never can forget is the parent of 
Maria Jane) taking entire possession of my unassuming estab- 
lishment. In the recesses of my own breast, the thought may 
linger that a man in ])osscssion cannot be so dreadful as a 
woman, and that woman Mrs. Podgit ; but 1 ought to bear a 
good deal, and I hope I can, and do. Huffing and snubbing 
prey upon my feelings : but, I can bear them without complaint. 
They may tell in the long run ; I may be hustled about, from 
post to pillar, beyond my strength ; nevertheless, I wish to 
avoid giving rise to words in the family. 

The voice of Nature, however, cried aloud in behalf of Augus- 
tus George, my infant son. It is for him that I wish to utter a 
few plaintive household words. I am not at all angry ; I am 
mild — but miserable. 

I wish to know why, when my child, Augustus George, was ex- 
pected in our circle, a provision of pins was made, as if the lit- 
tle stranger were a criminal who was to be put to the torture 
immediately on its arrival, instead of a holy babe ? I wish to 
know why haste was made to stick those pins all over his inno- 
cent form, in every direction ? I wish to be infornied why 


312 


BIRTHS. MRS. MEEK, OF A SON. 


light and air are excluded from Augustus George, like poisons ? 
Why, 1 ask, is my unoffending infant so hedged into a basket- 
bedstead, with dimity and calico, with miniature sheets and 
blankets, that I can only hear him snuffle (and no wonder !) deep 
down under the pink hood of a little bathing-machine, and can" 
never peruse even so much of his lineaments as his nose. 

Was I expected to be the father of a French Roll, that the 
brushes of All Nations were laid in, to rasp Augustus George ? 
Am I to be told that his sensitive skin was ever intended by 
Nature to have rashes brought out upon it, by the premature 
and incessant use of those formidable little instruments ? 

Is my son a Nutmeg, that he is to be grated on the stiff edg- 
es of sharp frills ? Am I the parent of a Muslin boy, that his 
yielding surface is to be crimped and small-plaited ? Or is my 
child composed of Paper or of Linen, that impressions of the 
finer getting-up art, practised by the laundress, are to be prin- 
ted off all over his soft arms and legs, as I constantly observe 
them ? The starch enters his soul ; who can wonder that he 
cries ? 

Was Augustus George intended to have limbs, or to be born 
a Torso ? I presume that limbs were the intention, as they 
are the usual practice. Then, why are my poor child’s limbs 
fettered and tied up ? Am I to be told that there is any anal- 
ogy between Augustus George Meek and Jack Sheppard ? 

Analyse Castor Oil at any Institution of Chemistry that may 
be agreed upon, and inform me what resemblance in taste it 
bears to that natural provision which it is at once the pride and 
duty of Maria Jane, to administer to Augustus George ! Yet, I 
charge Mrs. Prodgit (aided and abetted by Mrs. Bigby) with 
systematically forcing Castor Oil on my innocent son, from the 
first hour of his birth. When that medicine in its efficient ac- 
tion, causes internal disturbance to Augustus George, I charge 
Mrs. Prodgit (aided and abetted by Mrs. Bigby) within sanely 
and inconsistently administering opium to allay the storm she 
has raised ! What is the meaning of this ? 

If the days of Egyptian Mummies are past, how dare Mrs. 
Prodgit require, for the use of my son, an amount of flannel 
and linen that would carpet my humble roof ? Do I wonder 
that she requires it ? No ! This morning within an hour, I 
beheld this astonishing sight. I beheld my son — Augustus 
George — in Mrs. Prodgit’s hands, and on Mrs. Prodgit’ s knee, 
being dressed. He was at the moment, comparatively speak- 
ing, in a state of nature ; having nothing on, but an extremely 
short shirt, remarkably disproportionate to the length of his ] 


LYING AWAKE, 


313 


usual outer garments. Trailing from Mrs. Prodgit’s lap on the 
floor, was a long narrow roller or bandage — I should say of sev- 
eral yards in extent. In this, I SAW Mrs. Prodgit tightly roll 
the body of my unoffending infant, turning him over and over, 
now presenting his unconscious face upwards, now the back of 
his bald head, until the unnatural feat was accomplished, and 
the bandage secured by a pin, which I have every reason to be- 
lieve entered the body of my only child. In this tourniquet, 
he passes the present phase of his existence. Can I know it 
and smile ? 

I fear I have been betrayed into expressing myself warmly, 
but r feel deeply. Not for myself; but for Augustus George. 
I dare not interfere. Will any one ? Will any publication ? 
Any doctor ? Any parent ? Any body ? I do not complain 
that Mrs. Prodgit (aided and abetted by Mrs. Bigby) entirely 
alienates Maria Jane’s affections from me, and interposes an 
impassable barrier between us. I do not com])lain of being 
made of no account. I do not want to be of any account. 
But, Augustus George is a production of Nature (I canot think 
otherwise), and I claim that he should be treated with some re- 
mote reference to Nature. In my opinion Mrs. Prodgit is, from 
first to last, a convention and a superstition. Are all the facul- 
ty afraid of Mrs. Prodgit ? If not, why don’t they take her in 
hand, and improve her ? 

P.S. Maria Jane’s mamma boasts of her own knowledge of the 
subject, and says she brought up seven children besides Maria 
Jane. But how do I know that she might not have brought 
them up much better ? Maria Jane herself is far from strong, 
and is subject to headaches, and nervous indigestion. Besides 
which, I learn from the statistical tables that one child in five 
dies within the first year of its life ; and one child in three, 
within the fifth. That don’t look as if we could never improve 
in these particulars, I think ! 

P.P.S. Augustus George is in convulsions. 


LYING AWAKE. 



Y uncle lay with his eyes half closed, and his night- 
cap drawn almost down to his nose. His fancy was 
already wandering, and began to mingle up the pres- 
ent scene with the crater of Vesuvius, the French 


14 


314 


LYING A WANE. 


Opera, the Coliseum at Rome, Dolly’s Chop-house in London, 
and all the farrago of noted places with which the brain of a 
traveller is crammed : in a word, he was just falling asleep.” 

Thus, that delightful writer, Washington Irving, in his Tales 
of a Traveller. But, it happened to me the other night to be 
lying : not with my eyes half closed, but with my eyes wide 
open ; not with my nightcap drawn almost down to my nose, 
for on sanitary princii)les 1 never wear a nightcap ; but with my 
hair pitchforked and touzled all over the pillow ; not just falling 
asleep by any means, but glaringly, persistently, and obstinate- 
ly, broad awake. Perhaps, with no scientific intention or in- 
vention, I was illustrating the theory of the Duality of the 
Brain ; perhaps one part of my brain, being wakeful, sat uj) to 
watch the other part which was sleepy. Be that as it may, 
something in me was as desirous to go to sleep as it possibly 
could be, but something else in me would not go to sleep, and 
was as obstinate as George the Third. 

Thinking of George the Third — for I devote this paper to my 
train of thoughts as I lay awake : most people lying awake 
sometimes, and having some interest in the subject — put me in 
mind of Benjamin Franklin, and so Benjamin P'ranklin’s pa- 
per on the art of procuring pleasant dreams, which would seem 
necessarily to include the art of going to sleep, came into my 
head. Now, as I often used to read that paper when I was a 
very small boy, and as I recollect everything I read then, as 
perfectly as I forget everything I read now, I quoted “ Get out 
of bed, beat up and turn your pillow, shake the bed-clothes 
well with at least twenty shakes, then throw the bed open and 
leave it to cool ; in the meanwhile, continuing undrest, walk 
about your chamber. When you begin to feel the cold air un- 
pleasant, then return to your bed, and you will soon fall asleej), 
and your sleep will be sweet and pleasant.” Not a bit of it ! 
1 performed the whole ceremony, and if it were ])ossible for me 
to be more saucer-eyed than I was before, that was the only re- 
sult that came of it. 

Except Niagara. The two quotations from Washington Irv- 
ing and Benjamin Franklin may have put it iij my head by an 
American association of ideas ; but there 1 was, and the Horse- 
shoe Fall was thundering and tumbling in my eyes and in my 
ears, and the very rainbows that I left upon the spray when I 
really did last look upon it, were beautiful to see. The night-light, 
being quite as plain, however, and sleep coming to be many 
thousand miles further off* than Niagara, 1 made up my mind to 
think a little about Sleep ; which I no sooner did than I whii led 


LYING AWAKE. 


315 


off in spite of myself to Drury Lane Theatre, and there sa^v; a 
great actor and dear friend of mine (whom I had been thinking 
of in the day) playing Macbeth, and heard him apostrophising 
“the death of each day’s life,” as I have heard him many a 
time, in the days that are gone. 

But, Steep. I will think about Sleep. I am determined to 
think (this is the way I went on) about Sleep. I must hold the 
word Sleep, tight and fast, or I shall be off at a tangent in half 
a second. I feel myself unaccountably straying, already, into 
Clare Market. Sleep. It would be curious, as illustrating the 
equality of sleep, to inquire how many of its phenomena are 
common to all classes, to all degrees of wealth and poverty, to 
every grade of education and ignorance. Here, for example, 
is her Majest)^ Queen Victoria in her palace, this present bless- 
ed night, and here is Winking Charley, a sturdy vagrant, in one 
of her Majesty’s jails. Her Majesty has fallen, many thousands 
of times, from that same Tower, which / claim a right to tum- 
ble off now and then. So has Winking Charley. Her Majes- 
ty in her sleep has opened or prorogued Parliament, or has held 
a Drawing Room, attired in some very scanty dress, the defici- 
encies and improprieties of which have caused her great uneasi- 
ness. I, in my degree, have suffered unspeakable agitation of 
mind from taking the chair at a public dinner at the London 
Tavern in my nightclothes, which not all the courtesy of my 
kind friend and host Mr. Bathe could persuade me were quite 
adapted to the occasion. Winking Charley has been repeated- 
ly tried in a worse condition. Her Majesty is no stranger to a 
vault or firmament, of a sort of floorcloth, with an indistinct 
pattern distantly resembling eyes, which occasionally obtrudes 
itself on her repose.' Neither am I. Neither is Winking 
Charley. It is quite common to all three of us to skim along 
with airy strides a little above the ground ; also to hold, with 
the deepest interest, dialogues with various people, all repre- 
sented by ourselves ; and to be at our wits’ end to know what 
they are going to tell us : and to be indescribably astonished by 
the secrets they disclose. It is probable that we have all three 
committed murders and hidden bodies. It is pretty certain 
that we have all desperately wanted to cry out, and have had 
no voice : that we have all gone to the play and not been able 
to get in ; that we have all dreamed much more of our youth 
than of our later lives ; that — I have lost it ! The thread’s 
broken. 

And up I go. I, lying here with the night-light before me, 
up I go, for no reason on earth that I can find out, and drawn 


3i6 


LYING AWAKE. 


by no links that are visible to me, up the Great Saint Bernard ! 
1 have lived in Switzerland, and rambled among the mountains, 
but why I should go there now, and why up the Great Saint 
Bernard in preference to any other mountain, I have no idea. 
A? 1 lie here broad awake, and with every sense so sharpened 
that I can distinctly hear distant noises inaudible to me at an- 
other time, I make that journey, as I really did, on the same 
summer day, with the same haj^py party — ah ! two since dead, 
I grieve to think — and there is the same track, with the same 
black wooden arms to point the way, and there are the same 
storm-refuges here and there ; and there is the same snow falling 
at the top, and there are the same frosty mists, and there is 
the same intensely cold convent with its menagerie smell, and the 
same breed of dogs fast dying out, and the same breed of jolly 
young monks whom I mourn to know as humbugs, and the same 
convent parlour with its piano and the sitting round the fire, and 
the same supper, and the same lone night in a cellj and the 
same bright fresh morning when going out into the highly rare- 
fied air was like a plunge into an icy bath. Now, see here 
what comes along ; and why does this thing stalk into my mind 
on the top of a Swiss mountain • 

It is a figure that I once saw, just after dark, chalked upon 
a door in a little back lane near a country church — my first 
church. How young a child I may have been at the time I 
don’t know, but it horrified me so intensely — in connexion with 
the churchyard, I suppose, for it smokes a pipe, and has a big 
hat with each of its ears sticking out in a horizontal line under 
the brim, and is not in itself more oppressive than a mouth from 
ear to ear, a pair of goggle eyes, and hands like two bunches of 
carrots, five in each, can make it — that it is still vaguely alarm- 
ing to me to recall (as I have often done before, lying awake) 
the running home, the looking behind, the horror of its follow- 
ing me ; though whether disconnected from the door, or door 
and all, I can’t say, and perhaps never could. It lays a disa- 
greeable train. I must resolve to think of something on the 
voluntary principle. 

The balloon ascents of this last season. They will do to 
think about, while I lie awake, as well as anything else. I must 
hold them tight though, for I feel them sliding away, and in 
their stead are the Mannings, husband and wife, hanging on the 
top of Horsemonger Lane Jail. In connexion with wnich dis- 
mal spectacle, I recall this curious fantasy of the mind. That, 
having beheld that execution, and having left those two forms 
dangling on the top of the entrance gate-way — the man’s, a limp. 


LYING AWAKE, 


317 


loose suit of clothes as if the man had gone out of them : the 
woman’s, a fine shape, so elaborately corseted and artfully 
dressed, that it was quite unchanged in its trim appearance as 
it slowly swung from side to side — I never could, by my utmost 
eftbrts, for some weeks, present the outside of that prison to my- 
self (which the terrible impression 1 had received continually 
obliged me to do) without presenting it with the two figures still 
hanging in the morning ai»-. Until, strolling past the gloomy 
place one night, when the street was deserted and quiet, and 
actually seeing that the bodies were not there, my fancy was 
persuaded as it were, to take them down and bury them within 
the {irecincts of the jail, where they have lain ever since. 

The balloon ascents of last season. Let me reckon them up. 
There were the horse, the bull, the parachute, and the tumbler 
haiTging on — chiefly by his toes, I believe — below the car. Very 
wrong, indeed, and decidedly to be stopped. But, in connexion 
with these and similar dangerous exhibitions, it strikes me that 
portion of the public whom they entertain, is unjustly reproached. 
Their pleasure is in the difficulty overcome. They are a public 
of great faith, and are quite confident that the gentleman will 
not fall off the horse, or the lady off the bull or out of the para- 
chute, and that the tumbler has a firm hold with his toes. They 
do not go to see the adventurer vanquished, but triumphant. 
There is no parallel in public combats between men and beasts, 
because nobody can answer for the particular beast — unless it 
were always the same beast, in which case it would be a mere 
stage-show which the same public would go in the same state of 
mind to see, entirely believing in the brute being beforehand safely 
subdued by the man. That they are not accustomed to cal- 
culate hazards and dangers with any nicety, we may know from 
their rash exposure of themselves in overcrowded steamboats, 
and unsafe conveyances, and places of all kinds. And I cannot 
help thinking that instead of railing, and attributing savage mo- 
tives to a people naturally well disposed and humane, it is better 
to teach them, and lead them argumentatively and reasonably 
— for they are very reasonable, if you will discuss a matter with 
them — to more considerate and wise conclusions. 

This is a disagreeable intrusion ! Here is a man with his 
throat cut, dashing towards me as 1 lie awake ! A recollection 
of an old story of a kinsman of mine, who, going home one foggy 
winter night to Hamstead, when London was much smaller and 
the load lonesome, suddenly encountered such a figure rushing 
past him, and presently two keepers from a madhouse in per- 


LYING A WANE. 


'3t8 

suit. A very unpleasant creature indeed, to come into'my mind 
unbidden, as I lie awake. 

— The balloon ascents of last season. I must return to the 
balloons. Why did 'the bleeding man start out of them ? Never 
mind ; if I inquire, he will be back again. The balloons. This 
particular public have inherently a great pleasure in the con- 
templation of physical difficulties overcome ; mainly, as I take 
it because the lives of a large majority of them are exceedingly 
monotonous and real, and further, are a struggle against con- 
tinual difficulties, and futher still, because anything in the form 
of accidental injury or any kind of illness or disability is so very 
serious in their own sphere. I will explain this seeming paradox 
of mine. Take the case of a Chiistmas Pantomime. Surely 
nobody supposes that the young mother in the pit who falls into 
fits of laughter when the baby is boiled or sat upon, would <be 
at all diverted by such an occurrence off the stage. Nor is the 
decent workman in the gallery, who is transported beyond the 
ignorant present by the delight with which he sees a stout gen- 
tleman pushed out of a two pair of stairs window, to be slandered 
by the suspicion that he would be in the least entertained by 
such a spectacle in any street in London, Paris, or New York. 
It always appears to me that the secret of this enjoyment lies 
in the temporary superiority to the common hazards and mis- 
chances of life ; in seeing casualties, attended when they really 
occur with bodily and mental suffering, tears, and poverty, 
happen through a very rough sort of poetry without the least 
harm being done to any one — the pretence of distress in a pan- 
tomime being so broadly humorous as to be no pretence at all. 
Much as in the comic fiction I can understand the mother with 
a very vulnerable baby at home, greatly relishing the invulner- 
able baby on the stage, so in the Cremorne reality I can under- 
stand the mason who is always liable to fall off a scaffold in his 
working jacket and to be carried to the hospital, having an in- 
finite admiration of the radiant personage in spangles who goes 
into the clouds upon a bull, or upside down, and who, he takes 
it for granted — not reflecting upon the thing — has, by uncom- 
mon skill and dexterity, conquered such mischances as those to 
which he and his acquaintance are continually exposed. 

I wish the Morgue in Paris would not come here as I lie 
awake, with its ghastly beds, and the swollen saturated clothes 
hanging up, and the water dripping, dripping all day long, upon 
that other swollen saturated something in the corner, like a heap 
of crushed over-ripe figs that 1 have seen in Italy ! And this de- 
testable Morgue comes back again at the head of a procession of 


LYING AWAKE. 


519 


forgotten gho^t stories. This will never do. . I must think of 
something else as I lie awake ; or, like that sagacious animal in 
the United States who recognised the colonel who was such a dead 
shot, 1 am a gone 'Coon. What shall I think of ? I'he late' 
brutal assaults. Very good subject. The late brutal assaults. 

(Though whether, supposing 1 should see, here before me as 
I lie awake, the awful phantom described in one of those ghost 
stories, who, with a head-dress of shroud, was always seen look- 
ing in through a certain glass door at a certain dead hour — 
whether, in such a case it would be the least consolation to me 
to know on philosphical grounds that it was merely myaiiiagina- 
tion, is a question I can't hel[) asking myself by the way.) 

The late brutal assaults. 1 strongly question the exi)ediency of 
advocating the revival of whipping for those crimes. It is a nat- 
ural and generous impulse to be indignant at the perpetration of 
inconceivable brutality, but I doubt the whipping panacea 
gravely. Not in the least regard or pity for the criminal, whom 
1 hold in far lower estimation than a mad wolf, but in consider- 
ation foi the general tone and feeling, which is very much im- 
proved since the whipping times. It is bad for a people to be 
familiarised with such punishments. When the whip went out of 
Bridewell, and ceased to be flourished at the cart’s tail and at the 
whij^ping-post, it began to fade out of mad-houses, and work- 
houses and schools, and families, and to give place to a better sys- 
tem everywhere, than cruel driving. It would be hasty, because 
a few brutes may be inadequately punished, to revive, in any as- 
pect, what, in so many aspects, society is hardly yet happily 
rid of. The whip is a very contagious kind of thing, and difficult 
to confine within one set of bounds. Utterly abolish punish- 
ment by fine — a barbarous device, quite as much out of date 
as wager by battle, but particularly connected in the vulgar mind 
with this class of offence — at least quadruple the term of im- 
])risonment fo^ aggravated assaults — and above all let us in such 
cases have no Bet Prisoning, vain-glorlfying, strong soup, and 
roasted meats, but hard work, and one unchanging and uncom- 
))romising dietary of bread and water, well or ill; and we shall 
do much better than by going down into the dark to grope for 
the whi[) among the rusty fragments of the rack, and the brand- 
ing iron, and the chains and gibbet from the ])ublic roads, and 
the weights that pressed men to death in the cells of Newgate. 

I had proceeded thus far, when I found I had been lying 
awake so long that the very dead began to wake too, and crowd 
into my thoughts most sorrowfully. Therefore, I resolved to 
lie awake no more, but to get up and go out for a night walk — 


320 


THE POOR RELATION'S STORY, 


which resolution was an acceptable relief to me, as I dare say 
it may prove now to a great many more. 


THE POOR RELATION’S STORY. 

E was very reluctant to take precedence of so many 
respected members of the family, by beginning the 
round of stories they were to relate as they sat in a 
goodly circle by the Christmas fire ; and he modestly 
suggested that it would be more correct if “ John our esteemed 
host” (whose health he begged to drink) would have the kind- 
ness to begin. For as to himself he said, he was so little used 
to the way that really — But as they all cried out here, that 
he must begin, and agreed with one voice that he might, could, 
would, and should begin, he left off rubbing his hands, and took 
his legs out from under his arm-chair, and did begin. 

1 have no doubt (said the poor relation) that I shall surprise 
the assembled members of our family, and particularly John 
our esteemed host to whom we are so much indebted for the 
great hospitality with which he has this day entertained us, by 
the confession I am going to make. But, if you do me the 
honour to be surprised at anything that falls from a person so 
unimportant in the family as I am, I can only say that I shall 
be scrupulousy accurate in all 1 relate. 

I am not what I am supposed to be. I am quite another 
thing. Perhaps before I go further, 1 had better glance at 
what I am supposed to be. 

It is supposed, unless I mistake — the assembled members of 
our family will correct me if 1 do, which is very likely (here the 
poor relation looked mildly about him for contradiction) ; that 
I am nobody’s enemy but my own. That I never met with 
any particular success in anything. That I failed in business 
because I was unbusiness-like and credulous — in not being 
prepared for the interested designs of my partner. That 1 
failed in love, because I was ridiculously trustful — in thinking it 
impossible that Christiana could deceive me. That I failed in 
my expectations from my uncle Chill, on account of not being 
as sharp as he could have wished in worldly matters. That, 
through life, I have been rather put upon and disappointed, in 
a general way. That 1 am at present a bachelor of between 
hfty-nine and sixty years of age, living on a limited income in 



THE POOR RELATION’S STORY. 


321 


the form of a quarterly allowance, to which I see that John oar 
esteemed host, wishes me to make no further allusion. 

The supposition as to my present pursuits and habits is to 
the following etfect. 

I live in a lodging in the Clapham Road — a very clean 
back room, in a very respectable house — where I am expected 
not to be at home in the day-time, unless poorly ; and which I 
usually leave in the morning at nine o’clock, on pretence of 
going to business. I take my breakfast — my roll and butter, 
and my half-pint of coffee — at the old established coffee-shop 
near Westminster Bridge : and then I go into the City — I don’t 
know why — and sit in Garraway’s Coffee House, and on 
’Change, and walk about, and look into a few offices and count- 
ing houses where some of my relations or acquaintances are so 
good as to tolerate me, and where I stand by the fire if the 
weather happens to be cold. 1 get through the day in this way 
until five o’clock, and then I dine : at a cost, on the average, 
of one and threepence. Having still a little money to spend 
on my evening’s entertainment, 1 look into the old-established 
coffee-shop as I go home, and take my cup of tea, and perhaps 
my bit of toast. So as the large hand of the clock makes its 
way round to the morning hour again, I make my way round 
to the Clat)ham Road again, and go to bed when 1 get to my 
lodging — fire being expensive, and being objected to by the 
family on account of its giving trouble and making a dirt. 

Sometimes, one of my relations or acquaintances is so 
obliging as to ask me to dinner. Those are holiday occasions, 
and then I generally walk in the Bark. I am a solitary man, 
and seldom walk with anybody. Not that 1 am avoided be- 
cause I am shabby ; for I am not at all shabby, having always 
a very good suit of black on (or rather Oxford mixture, which 
has the appearance of black and wears much better) ; but 1 
have got into a habit of speaking low, and being rather silent, 
and my spirits are not high, I am sensible that I am not an at- 
tractive companion. 

The only exception to this general rule is the child of my 
first cousin. Little Frank. I have a particular affection for 
that child, and he takes very kindly to me. He is a diffident 
boy by nature ; and in a crowd he is soon run over, as 1 may 
say, and forgotten. He and I, however, get on exceedingly 
well. I have a fancy that the poor child will in time succeed 
to my peculiar position in the family. AVe talk but little, still 
we understand each other. We walk about, hand in hand ; and 
without much speaking he knows what I mean, and 1 know 
U* 


322 


THE POOR RELATION'S STORY, 


what he means. When he was very little indeed, I used to take 
him to the windows of the toy-shops, and show him the toys 
inside. It is surprising how soon he found out that I would 
have made him a great many presents if I had been in circum- 
stances to do it. 

Little Frank and I go and look at the outside of the Monu- 
ment — he is very fond of the Monument — and at the Bridges, 
and at all the sights that are free. On two of my birthdays, we 
have dined on ^-la-mode beef, and gone at half-price to the 
play, and been deeply interested. 1 was once walking with 
him in Lombard Street, which we often visit on account of my 
having mentioned to him that there are great riches there — he 
is very fond of Lombard Street — when a gentleman said to me 
as he passed by, “ Sir your little son has dropped his glove.” I 
assure you, if you will excuse my remarking on so trivial a cir- 
cumstance, this accidental mention of the child as mine, quite 
touched my heart and brought the foolish tears to my eyes. 

When little Frank is sent to school in the country, I shall be 
very much at a loss what to do with myself, but I have the in- 
tention of walking down there once a month and seeing him 
on a half holiday. I am told he will then be at play upon the 
Heath ; and if my visits should be objected to, as unsettling 
the child, I can see him from a distance without his seeing me, 
and walk back again. His mother comes of a highly genteel 
family, and rather disapproves, I am aware, of our being too 
much together. I know that I am not calculated to improve 
his retiring disposition ; but I think he would miss me beyond 
the feeling of the moment, if we were wholly separated. 

When 1 die in the Clapham Road, 1 shall not leave much 
more in this world than I shall take out of it ; but, I happen to 
have a miniature of a bright-faced-boy, with a curling head, and 
an open shirt-frill waving down his bosom (my mother had it 
taken for me, but I can’t believe that it was ever like), which 
will be worth nothing to sell, and which I shall beg may be 
given to Frank. 1 have written my dear boy a little letter with 
it, in which I have told him that I felt very sorry to part from 
him, though bound to confess that I knew no reason why I 
should remain here. I have given him some short advice, the 
best in my power, to take warning of the consequences of 
being nobody’s enemy but liis own ; and 1 have endeavoured to 
comfort him for what 1 fear he will consider a bereavement, by 
pointing out to him, that 1 was only a supertluous something to 
every one but him ; and that having by some means failed to 
find a place in this great assembly, 1 am better out of it. 


THE POOR RELATION'S STORY. 


323 


Such (said the poor relation, clearing his throat and beginning 
to speak a little loader) is the general impression about me. 
Now, it is a remarkable circumstance which forms the aim and 
purpose of my story, that this is all wrong. This is not my 
life, and these are not my habits. I do not even live in Clap- 
ham Road. Comparatively speaking, I am very seldom there. 
I reside, mostly, in a — I am almost ashamed to say the word, it 
sounds so full of pretension— in a Castle. I do not mean that 
it is an old baronial habitation, but still it is a building always 
known to every one by the name of a Castle. In it, I preseiwe 
the particulars of my history ; they run thus : 

It was when I first took John Spatter (who had been my 
clerk) into partnership, and when I was still a young man of 
not more than five-and-twenty, residing in the house of my 
uncle Chill from whom I had considerable expectations, that I 
ventured to propose to Christiana. I had loved Christiana, a 
long time. She was very beautiful, and very winning in all 
respects. I rather mistrusted her widowed mother, who I 
feared was of a plotting and mercenary turn of mind ; but, I 
thought as well of her as I could, for Christiana’s sake. I 
never had loved any one but Christiana, and she had been all 
the world, and O far more than all the world, to me from our 
childhood ! 

Christiana accepted me with her mother’s consent, and I 
was rendered very happy indeed. My life at my uncle Chill’s 
was of a spare dull kind, and my garret chamber was as dull, 
and bare, and cold, as an upper ])rison room in some stern 
northern fortress. But, having Christiana’s love, I wanted 
nothing upon earth. I would not have changed my lot with 
any human being. 

Avarice was, unhapi)ily, my Uncle Chill’s master-vice. 
Though he was rich, he pinched, and scraped, and clutched, and 
lived miserably. As Christiana had no fortune, I was for some 
time a little fearful of confessing our engagement to him ; but, 
at length I wrote him a letter, saying how it all truly was. I 
put it into his hand one night, on going to bed. 

As 1 came down stairs next morning, shivering in the cold 
December air ; colder in my uncle’s unwarmed house than in 
the street, where the winter sun did sometimes shine, and which 
was at all events enlivened by cheerful faces and voices passing 
along ; I carried a heavy heart towards the long, low breakfast- 
room in which my uncle sat. It was a large room with a small 
fire, and there was a great bay window in it which the rain had 
marked in the night as if with the tears of houseless people. It 


324 


- THE POOR RELATION'S STORY. 

stared upon a raw yard, with a cracked stone pavement, and 
some rusted iron railings half uprooted, whence an ugly out- 
building that had once been a dissecting-room (in the time of 
the great surgeon who had mortgaged the house to my uncle), 
stared at it. 

We rose so early always, that at that time of the year we 
breakfasted by candle-light. When 1 went into the room, my 
uncle was so contracted by the cold, and so huddled together in 
his chair behind the one dim candle, that I did not see him until 
1 was close to the table. 

As I held out my hand to him, he caught up his stick (being 
infirm, he always walked about the house with a stick), and 
made a blow at me, and said, “ You fool ! ” 

“Uncle,” I returned, “ I didn’t expect you to be so angry as 
this.” Nor had I expected it though he was a hard and angry 
old man. 

“ You didn’t expect ! ” said he ; “ when did you ever expect ? 
When did you ever calculate or look forward, you contemptible 
dog?” 

“ These are hard words, uncle ! ” 

“ Hard words ? Feathers, to pelt such an idiot as you with,” 
said he. “ Here ! Betsy Snap ! Look at him ! ” 

Betsy Snap was a withered, hard-favoured, yellow old woman 
— our only domestic — always employed, at this time of the morn- 
ing, in rubbing my uncle’s legs. As my uncle adjured her to 
look at me, he put his lean grip on the crown of her head, 
she kneeling beside him, and turned her face towards me. An 
involuntary thought connecting them both with the Dissecting 
Room, as it must often have been in the surgeon’s time, 
passed across my mind in the midst of my anxiety. 

“'Look at the snivelling milksop !” said my uncle. “ Look 
at the baby ! This is the gentleman who, j^eople say, is nobody’s 
enemy but -his own. This is the gentleman who can’t say no. 
This is the gentleman who was making such large profits in his 
business that he must needs take a partner, t’other day. This 
is the gentleman who is going to marry a wife without a penny, 
and who falls into the hands of Jezabels who are speculating on 
nly death ! ” 

I knew, now, how great my uncle’s rage was ; for nothing 
short of his being almost beside himself would have induced him 
to utter that concluding word, which he held in such repugnance 
that it was never spoken or hinted at before him on any ac- 
count. 

“ On my death,” he repeated, as if he were defying me by de- 


THE POOR RELATION’S STORY. 


325 


fying his own abhorrence of the word. “ On iny death — death 
— Death ! But I’ll spoil the speculation. Eat your last under 
this roof, you feeble wretch, and may it choke you ! ” 

You may sup|)ose that 1 had not much appetite for the break- 
fast to which I was bidden in these terms ; but, I took my ac- 
customed seat. I saw that I was repudiated henceforth by my 
uncle ; still I could bear that very well, possessing Christiana’s 
heart. 

He emptied his basin of bread and milk as usual, only that he 
took it on his knees with his chair turned away from the table 
where 1 sat. When he had done, he carefully snuffed out the 
candle ; and the cold, slate-coloured, miserable day looked in 
upon us. 

“ Now, Mr. Michael,” said he, “before we part, I should like 
to have a word with these ladies in your presence.” 

“ As you will, sir,” I returned ; “ but you deceive yourself, 
and wrong us, cruelly, if you suppose that there is any feeling 
at stake in this contract but pure, disinterested, faithful love.” 

To this, he only replied, “ You lie ! ” and not one other word. 

We went, through half-thawed snow and half-frozen rain, to 
the house where Christiana and her mother lived. My uncle 
knew them very well. They were sitting at their breakfast, 
and were surprised to see us at that hour. 

“ Your servant, ma’am,” said my uncle to the mother. 

“ You divine the purpose of my visit, I dare say, ma’am. I 
understand there is a world of pure, disinterested, faithful love 
cooped up here. 1 am happy to bring it all it wants, to make 
it complete. I bring you your son-in-law, ma’am — and you 
your husband, miss. The gentleman is a perfect stranger to 
me, but I wish him joy of his wise bargain.” 

He snarled at me as he went out, and I never saw him 
again. 

It is altogether a mistake (continued the poor relation) to 
suppose that my dear Christiana, over-persuaded and influenced 
by her mother, married a rich man, the dirt from whose carriage 
wheels is often, in these changed times, thrown upon me as she' 
rides by. No, no. She married me. 

The way we came to be married rather sooner than we in- 
tended, was this. 1 took a frugal lodging and was saving and 
planning for her sake, when, one day, she spoke to me with 
great earnestness, and said : 

“My dear Michael, 1 have given you my heart. I have 
said that 1 loved you, and I have pledged myself to be your 
wife. I am as much yours through all changes of good and evil 


326 


THE POOR RELATION'S STORY. 

as if we had been married on the day when such words passed 
between, us. I know you well, and know that if we should be 
separated and our union broken off, your whole life would be 
shadowed, and all that might, even now, be stronger in your 
character for the conflict with the world would then be weak- 
ened to the shadow of what it is ! ” 

“ God help me, Christiana ! ” said I. “ You speak the truth.” 

“ Michael !” said she, putting her hand in mine, in all maid- 
enly devotion, “let us keep apart no longer. It is but forme 
to say that I can live contented upon such means as you have, 
and I well know you are happy. I say so from my heart. 
Strive no more alone ; let us strive together. My dear Michael, 
it is not right that I should keep secret from you what you do 
not suspect, but what distresses my whole life. My mother : 
without considering that what you have lost, you have lost for me, 
and on the assurance of my faith : sets her heart on riches, and 
urges another suit upon me, to my misery. I cannot bear this, 
for to bear it is to be untrue to you. I would rather share your 
struggles than look on. I want no better home than you can 
give me. I know that you will aspire and labour with a- higher 
courage if I am wholly yours, and let it be so when you will ! ” 

I was blest indeed, that day, and a new world opened to me. 
We were married in a very little while and I took my wife to 
our happy home. That was the beginning of the residence I 
have spoken of ; the Castle we have ever since inhabited to- 
gether, dates from that time. All our children have been born 
in it. Our first child — now, married — was a little girl, whom we 
called Christiana. Her son is so like Little Frank, that I 
hardly know which is which. 

The current impression as to my partner’s dealings with me 
is also quite erroneous. He did not begin to treat me coldly, as 
a poor simpleton, when my uncle and I so fatally quarrelled ; 
.nor did he afterwards gradually possess himself of our business 
and edge me out. On the contrary, he behaved to me with the 
utmost good faith and honour. 

Matters between us, took this turn : — On the day of my sep- 
aration from my uncle, and even before the arrival at our count- 
ing-house of my trunks (which he sent after me, not carriage 
}>aid), I went down to our room of business, on our little wharf, 
ov-erlooking the river ; and there I told John Spatter what had 
happened. John did not say, in reply, that rich old relatives 
were palpable facts, and that love and sentiment were moon- 
shine and fiction. He addressed me thus : 

“ Michael,” said John. “ We were at school together, and I 


THE POOR RELATION'S STORY. 


327 

generally had the knack of getting on better than you, and mak- 
ing a higher reputation.” 

“You had, John,” I returned. 

“Although,” said John, “I borrowed your books and lost 
them ; borrowed your pocket-money, and never repaid it ; got 
3 'oii to buv" my damaged knives at a higher price than I had 
given for them new; and to own to the windows that 1 had . 
broken.” 

“ All not worth mentioning, John Spatter,” said I, “ but cer- 
tainly true.” 

“ When you were first established in this infant business, which 
])romises to thrive so well,” pursued John, “ I came to you, in 
my search for almost any employment, and you made me your 
clerk.” 

“Still not worth mentioning, my dear John Spatter,” said I ; 

“ still, equally true.” 

“ And fii ding that I had a good head for business, and that 
I was really useful to the business, you did not like to retain 
me in that capacity, and thought it an act of justice soon to 
make me your partner.” 

“ Still less worth mentioning than any of those other little cir- 
cumstances you have recalled, John Spatter,” said I ; “ for I 
was, and am, sensible of your merits and my deficiencies.” 

“ Now my good friend,” said John, drawing my arm through 
his, as he had a habit of doing at school ; while two vessels out- 
side the windows of our counting house — which were shaped 
like the stern windows of a ship — went lightly down the river 
with the tide, as John and I might then be sailing away in com- 
pany, and in trust and’confidence, on our voyage of life ; “let 
there, under these circumstances, be a right understanding be- 
tween us. You are too easy, jMichael. You are nobody’s enemy 
but your own. Iff were to give you that damaging character 
among our connexion, with a shrug, and a shake of the head, 
and a sigh ; and if 1 were further to abuse the trust you place in 
me — ” 

“ But you never will abuse it at all, John,” 1 observed. 

“ Never ! ” said he, “but 1 am putting a case — 1 say, and if 1 
were further to abuse that trust by keeping this piece of our com- 
mon affairs in the dark, and this other piece in the light, and again 
this other piece in the twilight, and soon, 1 should strengthen my 
strength, and weaken your weakness, day by day, until at last 1 
found myself on the high road to fortune, and you left behind on 
some bare common, a hopeless number of miles out of the way.” 

“ Exactly so,” said I. 


328 


THE POOR RELATION'S STORV. 


“To prevent this, Michael,” said John Spatter, “or the re- 
motest chance of this, there must be perfect openness between 
us. Nothing must be concealed, and we must have but one 
interest.” 

“My dear John Spatter,” I assured him, “ that is precisely 
what I mean.” 

“ And when you are too easy,” pursued John, his face glow- 
ing with friendship, “ you must allow me to prevent that imper- 
fection in your nature from beimg taken advantage of, by any 
one ; you must not expect me to humour it — ” 

“ My dear John Spatter,” I interrupted, “I don't expect you 
to humour it. I want to correct it.” 

“ And 1 too ! ” said John. 

“ Exactly so ! ” cried 1. “ We both have the same end in 

view ; and, honourably seeking it, and fully trusting one another, 
and having but one interest, ours will be a prosperous and hapi)y 
partnership.” 

“ I am sure of it ! ” returned John Spatter. And we shook 
hands most affectionately. 

I took John home to my Castle, and we had a very happy day. 
Our partnership throve well. My friend and partner supplied 
what 1 wanted, as 1 had foreseen that he would ; and by im- 
proving both the business and myself, amply acknowledged any 
little rise in life to which 1 had helped him. 

I am not (said the poor relation, looking at the fire as he 
slowly rubbed his hands) very rich, for I never cared to be that : 
but I have enough, and am above all moderate wants and anxi^ 
eties. My Castle is not a splendid place, but it is very comfort- 
able, and it has a Vv^arm and cheerful air, and is quite a picture 
of Home. 

Our eldest girl, who is very like her mother, married John 
Spatter’s eldest son. Our two families are closely united in 
other ties of attachment. It is very pleasant of an evening, 
when we are all assembled together — which frequently happens 
— and when John and I talk over old times, and the one inter- 
est there has always been between us. 

I really do not know, in my Castle, what loneliness is. Some 
of our children or grandchildren are always about it, and the 
young voices of my descendants are delightful — O, how delight- 
ful ! — to me to hear. My dearest and most devoted wife, ever 
faithful, ever loving, ever helpful and sustaining and consoling, 
is the priceless blessing of my house ; from whom all its other 
blessings spring. We are rather a musical family, and when 


THE C HILDAS STORY. 


329 


-Christiana sees me, at any time, a little weary or depressed, she 
steals to the piano and sings a gentle air she used to sing when 
we were first betrothed. So weak a man am I, that I cannot 
bear to hear it from any other source. They played it once, at 
the Theatre, when 1 was there with little Frank ; and the child 
said wondering, “ Cousin Michael, whose hot tears are these 
that have fallen on my hand ! ” 

Such is my Castle, and such are the real particulars of my 
life therein preserved. I often take Little Frank home there. 
He is very welcome to my grandchildren, and they play to- 
gether. At this time of the year — the Christmas and New Year 
time — 1 am seldom out of my Castle. For the associations of 
the season seem to hold me there, and the precepts of the sea- 
son seem to teach me that it is well to be there. 

“ And the Castle is — ” observed a grave, kind voice among 
the company. 

“ Yes. My Castle,” said the poor relation, shaking his head 
as he still looked at the fire, “is in the Air. John our esteemed 
host suggests its situation accurately. My castle is in the air ! 
I have done. Will you be so good as to pass the story.” 


THE CHILD’S STORY. 



NCE upon a time, a good many years ago, there was a 
traveller, and he set out upon a journey. It was a 
magic journey, and was to seem very long when he 
began it, and very short when he got half way through. 

He travelled along a rather dark path for some little time, 
without meeting anything, until at last he came to a beautiful 
child. So he said to the child “ What do you do here ? ” 
And the child said, “ I am always at play. Come and play 
with me ! ” 

So he played with that child, the whole day long, and they 
were very merry. The sky was so blue, the sun was so bright, 
the water was so sparkling, the leaves were so green, the flowers 
were so lovely, and they heard such singing-birds, and saw so 
many butterflies, that everything was beautiful. This was in 
fine weather. When it rained, they loved to watch the falling 
drops, and to smell the fresh scents. When it blew, it was 
delightful to listen to the wind, and fancy what it said, as it came 


330 


THE CHILD'S STORY. 


'rushing from its home — where was" that, they wondered ! — whist- 
ling and howling, driving the clouds before it, bending the trees, 
rumbling in the chimneys, shaking the house, and making the 
sea roar in fury. But, when it snowed, that was best of all ; for, 
they liked nothing so well as to look up at the white flakes 
falling fast and thick, like down from the breasts of millions of 
white birds ; and to see how smooth and deep the drift was ; and 
to listen to the hush upon the paths and roads. 

They had plenty of the finest toys in the world, and the most 
astonishing picture-books : all about scimitars and slippers and 
turbans and dwarfs and giants and genii and fairies, and blue- 
beards and bean-stalks and riches and caverns and forests and 
Valentines and Orsons : and all new and all true. 

But, one day, of a sudden, the traveller lost the child. He 
called to him over and over again, but got no answer. So, he 
went upon his road, and went on for a little while without meet- 
ing anything, until at last he came to a handsome boy. So he 
said to the boy, “ What do you do here ? ” And the boy said, 
“ I am always learning. Come and learn with me.” 

So he learned with that boy about Jupiter and Juno, and the 
Greeks and the Romans, and 1 don’t know what, and learned 
more than I could tell — or he either, for he soon forgot a great 
deal of it. But, they Avere not always learning ; they had the 
merriest games that ever were played. They rowed upon the 
river in summer, and skated on the ice in winter; they were 
active afoot, and active on horseback ; at cricket and at all 
games at ball ; at prisoners’ base, hare and hounds, follow my 
leader, and more sports than I can think of; nobody could 
beat them. They had holidays too, and Twelfth cakes, and 
parties where they danced till midnight, and real Theatres where 
they saw palaces of real gold and silver rise out of the real earth, 
and saw all the wonders of the world at once. As to friends, 
they had such dear friends and so many of them, that I want 
the time to reckon them up. They were all young, like the 
handsome boy, and were never to be strange to one another all 
their lives through. 

Still, one day, in the midst of all these pleasures, the traveller 
lost the boy as he had lost the child, and after calling to him in 
vain, went on upon his journey. So he went on for a little 
while without seeing anything, until at last he came to a young 
man. So he said to the young man, “ What do you do here ? ” 
And the young man said, “I am always in love. Come and 
love with me.” 

So he went away with that young man, and presently they 


THE CHILD'S STORY. 


331 


came to one of the prettiest girls that ever was seen — ^jiist like 
Fanny in the corner there — and she had eyes like Fanny, and 
hair like Fanny, and dimples like Fanny’s, and she laughed and 
coloured just as Fanny does while I am talking about her. So 
the young man fell in love directly — ^just as somebody I won’t 
mention, the first time he came here, did with P’anny. Well ! 
He was teazed sometimes — just as somebody used to be by 
Fanny ; and they quarrelled sometimes — ^justas Somebody and 
Fanny used to quarrel; and they made it up, and sat in the 
dark, and wrote letters every day, and never were happy asun- 
der, and were always looking out for one another and pretend- 
ing not to, and were engaged at Christmas time, and sat close 
to one another by the fire, and were going to be married very 
soon — all exactly like Somebody I won’t mention and Fanny ! 

I’lit, the traveller lost them one day, as he had lost the rest 
of his friends, and, after calling to them to come back, 
which they never did, went on upon his journey. So he went 
on for a little while without seeing anything, until at last he came 
to a middle-aged gentleman. So he said to the gentleman, 
“ What are you doing here ? ” And his answer was, “ I am 
always busy. Come and be busy with me ! ” 

So he began to be very busy with that gentleman, and they 
went on through the wood together. The whole journey was 
through a wood, only it had been open and green at first, like a 
wood in spring ; and now began to be thick and dark like a 
wood in summer ; some of the little trees that had come out 
earliest, were even turning brown. The gentleman was not 
alone, but had a lady of about the same age with him, who was 
his Wife ; and they had children, who were with them too. So, 
they all went on together through the wood, cutting down the 
trees, and making a path through the branches and the fallen 
leaves, and carrying burdens, and working hard. 

Sometimes, they came to a long green avenue that opened 
into deeper woods. Then they would hear a very little distant 
voice crying, “ Father, father, I am another child ! Stop for 
me ! ” And presently they would see a very little figure, grow- 
ing larger as it came along,, running to join them. When it came 
up, tl-key all crowded round it, and kissed and welcomed it ; and 
then they all went on together. 

Sometimes, they came to several avenues at once, and then 
they all stood still, and one of the children said, “ Father I am 
going to sea,” and another said, “ Father, I am going to India,” 
and another, “ Father, I am going to seek my fortune where I 
can,” and another, “ Father, I am going to Heaven ! ” So, 


332 


THE CHILD STOEV. 


with many tears at parting, they went, solitary, down those 
avenues, each child upon its way ; and the child who vvent to 
Heaven, rose into the golden air and vanished. 

Whenever these partings happened, the traveller looked at the 
gentleman, and saw him glance up at the sky above the trees, 
where the day was beginning to decline, and the sunset to come 
on. He saw, too, that his hair was turning grey. But, they 
never could rest long, for they had their journey to perform, 
and it was necessary for them to be always busy. 

At last, there had been so many partings that there were no 
children left, and only the traveller, the gentleman, and the lady, 
went upon there way in company. And now the wood was 
yellow ; and now brown ; and the leaves, even of the forest 
trees, began to fall. 

So they came to an avenue that was darker than the rest, 
and were pressing forward on their journey without looking down 
it when the lady stopped. 

“ My husband,” said the lady. “ I am called.” 

They listened, and they heard a voice, a long way down the 
avenue, say, “ Mother, mother !” 

It was the voice of the first child who had said, “ I am going 
to Heaven !” and the father said, “ I pray not yet. The sun- 
set is very near. I pray not yet ! ” 

- But, the voice cried “Mother, mother!” without minding 
him, though his hair was now quite white, and tears were on his 
face. 

Then, the mother, who was already drawn into the shade of 
the dark avenue and moving away with her arms still round his 
neck, kissed him, and said “ My dearest, I am summoned, and 
I go I ” And she was gone. And the traveller and he were 
left alone together. 

And they went on and on together, until they came to very 
near the end of the wood : so near, that they could see the sun- 
set shining red before them through the teees. 

Yet, once more, while he broke his way among the branches 
the traveller lost his friend. He called and called, but there 
was no reply, and when he passed out of the wood, and saw the 
peaceful sun going down upon a wide purple prospect, he came 
to an old man sitting on a fallen tree. So, he said to the old 
man, “What do you do here?” And the old man said with a 
calm smile, “ I am always remembering. Come and remember 
with me 1 ” 

So the traveller sat down by the side of that old man, face to 
face with the serene sunset ; and all his friends came softly 


THE SCHOOLBOY'S STORY. 


333 


back and stood around him. The beautiful child, the hand- 
some boy, the young man in love, the father, mother, and chil- 
dren ; every one of them was there, and he had lost nothing. 
So he loved them all, and was kind and forbearing with them 
all, and was always pleased to watch them all, and they all hon- 
oured and loved him. And I think the traveller must be your- 
self, dear Grandfather, because this is what you do to us, and 
what we do to you. 


THE SCHOOLBOY’S STORY. 



KING rather young at present — I am getting on in 
years, but still I am rather young— I have no particu- 
lar adventures of my own to fall back upon. It 
wouldn’t much interest anybody here, I supi)ose, to 
know what a screw the Reverend is, or what a griffin she is, or 
how they do stick it into parents — particularly hair-cutting, and 
medical attendance. One of our fellows was charged in his 
half s account twelve and sixpence for two pills — tolerably pro- 
fitable at six and threepence a-piece, I should think — and he 
never took them either, but put them up the sleeve of his 
jacket. 

As to the beef, it’s shameful. It’s not beef. Regular beef 
isn’t veins. You can chew regular beef. Besides which, there’s 
gravy to regular beef, and you can never see a drop to ours. 
Another of our fellows went home ill, and heard the family 
doctor tell his father that he couldn’t account for his complaint 
unless it was the beer. Of course it was the beer, and well it 
might be ! 

- However, beef and Old Cheesman are two different things. 
So is beer. It was old Cheeseman I meant to tell about ; not 
the manner in which our fellows get their constitutions destroyed 


for the sake of profit. 

Why, look at the pie-crust alone. There’s no flakiness in it. 
It’s solid — like damp lead. Then our fellows get nightmares, 
and are bolstered for calling out and waking other fellows. 


Who can wonder ! 

Old Cheeseman one night walked in his sleep, put his hat on 
over his night-cap, got hold of a fishing-rod and a cricket bat, 
and went down into the parlour, where they naturally thought 
from his appearance he was a Ghost. Why, he never would 
have done that, if his meals had been wholesome. When we 


334 


THE SCHOOLBOY'S STORY. 


all begin to walk in our sleeps, I supi)Ose they’ll be sorry foi 
it. 

Old Chceseraaii wasn’t second Latin Afaster then ; lie was a 
fellow himself. He was first brought there, very small, in a 
post-chaise, by a woman who was always taking snuff and shaking 
him — and that was the most he remembered about it. He 
never went home for the holidays. His accounts (he never 
learnt any extras) were sent to a Bank, and the Bank paid 
them ; and he had a brown suit twice a-year and went into 
boots at twelve. They were always too big for him, too. 

In the Midsummer holidays, some of our fellows who lived 
within walking distance, used to come back and climb the trees 
outside the playground wall, on purpose to look at Old Cheese- 
man reading there by himself He was always as mild as the 
tea — and that's pretty mild, I should hope ! — so when they 
whistled to him, he looked up and nodded ; and when they 
said “ Hallo Old Cheeseman, what have you had for dinner.?” 
he said “Boiled mutton;” and when they said “An’t it soli- 
tary, Old Cheeseman ! ” he said “ It is a little dull, sometimes ; ” 
and then they said “ Well, good bye. Old Cheeseman ! ” and 
climbed down again. Of course it was imposing on Old Cheese- 
man to give him nothing but boiled mutton through a whole 
Vacation, but that was just like the system. When they didn’t 
give him boiled mutton they gave him rice pudding, pretending 
it was a treat. And saved the butcher. 

So Old Cheeseman went on. The holidays brought him into 
other trouble besides the loneliness ; because when the fellows 
began to come back, not wanting to, he was always glad to see 
them : which was aggravating when they were not glad at all to 
see him, and so he got his head knocked against walls, and that 
was the way his nose bled. But he was a favourite in general. 
Once, a subscription was raised for him ; and to keep up his 
spirits, he was presented before the holidays with two white 
mice, a rabbit, a pigeon, and a beautiful puppy. Old Cheese- 
man cried about it — especially soon afterwards, when they all 
ate one another. 

Of course Old Cheeseman used to be called by the names of 
all sorts of cheeses — Double Glo’sterman, Family Cheshireman, 
Dutchman, North Wiltshireman, and all that. But he never 
minded it. And I don’t mean to say he was old in point of 
years — because he wasn’t — only he was called, from the first. 
Old Cheeseman. ! 

At last. Old Cheeseman was made second I.atin Master, j 
He was brought in one morning at the beginning of a new half, j 





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THE SCHOOLBOY^S STORY. 


335 


and presented to the school in that capacity as Mr. Cheese- 
man.” Then our fellows all agreed that Old Cheeseman was a 
spy, and a deserter, who had gone over to the enemy’s camp, 
and sold himself for gold. It was no excuse for him that he 
had sold himself for very little gold — two pound ten a quarter 
and his washing, as was reported. It was decided by a Parlia- 
ment which sat about it, that Old Cheeseman’s mercenary 
motives could alone be taken into account, and that he had 
“ coined our blood for drachmas.” The Parliament took the 
expression out of the quarrel scene between Brutus and Cas- 
sius. 

When it was settled in this strong way that Old Cheeseman 
was a tremendous traitor, who had wormed himself into our 
fellows’ secrets on purpose to get himself into favour by giving 
up everything that he knew, all courageous fellows were invited 
to come forward and enroll themselves in a Society for making 
a set against him. 'Phe President of the Society was First boy, 
named Bob Tartar. His father was in the West Indies, and 
he owned, himself, that his father was worth Millions. He had 
great power among our fellows, and he wrote a parody, begin- 
ning, 

“ Who made believe to be so meek 
That we could hardly hear him speak, 

Yet turned out an Informino^ Sneak ? 

Old Cheeseman.” 

— and on in that way through more than a dozen verses, which 
he used to go and sing, every morning, close by the new 
master’s desk. He trained one of the low boys, too, a 
rosy-cheeked little Brass who didn’t care what he did, to go up 
to him with his l.atin Crammar one morning, and say so : — 
Nommatkms pronominum — Old Cheesman, 7'aro exprimitur — 
— was never suspected, 7iisi disti7ictio7iis — of being an informer, 
ant e} 7 ipJiasis gratia — until he proved one. Ut — for instance, 
Vos da77i7iastis — when he sold the boys. Quasi — as though, 
dicat — he should Frctcerea 7ie77io — I’m a Judas! All this 

produced a great effect on Old Cheeseman. He had never 
had much hair ; but what he had began to get thinner and 
thinner every day. He grew paler and more worn ; and 
sometimes of an evening he was seen sitting at his desk with 
a precious long snuff to his candle, and his hands before his 
face crying. But no member of the Society could pity him, 
even if he felt inclined, because the President said it was Old 
Cheeseman’s conscience. 

So old Cheeseman went on, and didn’t he lead a miserable 


THE SCHOOLBOY'S STORY. 


33<5 

life ! Of course the Reverend turned up his nose at him, and 
of course she did — because both of them always do that, at all 
the masters — but he suffered from the fellows most, and he 
suffered from them constantly. He never told about it that 
the Society could find out ; but he got no credit for that, 
because the President said it was Old Cheeseinan’s cowardice. 

He had only one friend in the world, and that one was almost 
as powerless as he was, for it was only Jane. Jane was a sort 
of wardrobe-woman to our fellows, and took care of the boxes. 
She had come at first, I believe, as a kind of apprentice — some 
of our fellows say from a Charity, but / don’t know — and after 
her time was out, had stopped at so much a year. So little a 
year, perhaps I ought to say, for it is far more likely. How- 
ever, she had put some pounds in the Savings’ Bank, and she 
was a very nice young woman. She was not quite i)retty ; but 
she had a frank, honest, bright face, and all our fellows were 
fond of her. She was uncommonly neat and cheerful, and un- 
commonly comfortable and kind. And if anything was the 
matter with a fellow’s mother, he always went and showed the 
letter to Jane. 

Jane was Old Cheeseman’s friend. The more the Society 
went against him, the more Jane stood by him. She used to 
give him a good-humoured look out of her still-room window, 
sometimes, that seemed to set him up for the day. She used 
to pass out of the orchard and the kitchen-garden (always kept 
locked, I believe you !) through the play-ground, when she 
might have gone the other way, only to give a turn of her head, 
as much as to say Keep up your spirits ! ” to Old Cheese- 
man. His slip of a room was so fresh and orderly, that it was 
well known who looked after it while he was at his desk ; and 
when our fellows savv a smoking hot dumpling on his plate at 
dinner, they knew with indignation who had sent it up. 

Under these circumstances, the Society resolved, after a 
quantity of meeting and debating, that Jane should be requested 
to Cut Old Cheeseman dead ; and that if she refused she must 
be sent to Coventry herself. So a deputation, headed by the 
President, was appointed to wait on Jane, and inform her of 
the vote the Society had been under the painful necessity of 
passing. She was very much respected for all her good quali- 
ties, and there was a story about her having once wa3;laid the 
Reverend in his own study and got a fellow off from severe 
punishment, of her own kind comfortable heart. So the 
deputation didn’t much like the job. However, they went up, 
and the President told Jane all about it. Upon which Jane 


THE SCHOOLBOY'S, STORY, 


337 


turned very red, burst into tears, informed the President and 
the deputation, in a way not at all like her usual, way, that they 
were a parcel of malicious young savages, and turned the whole 
respected body out of the room. Consequently it was entered 
in the Society’s book (kept in astronomical cypher for fear of 
detection), that all communication with Jane was interdicted ; 
and the President addressed the members on this convincing 
instance of Old Cheeseman’s undermining. 

But Jane was as true to Old Cheeseman as Old Cheeseman 
was false to our fellows — in their opinion at all events — and 
steadily continued to be his only friend. It was a great ex- 
asperation to the Society, because Jane was as much a loss to 
them as she was a gain to him ; and being more inveterate 
against him than ever, they treated him worse than ever. At 
last, one morning, his desk stood emi)ty, his room was peeped 
into and found to be vacant, and a whisper went about among 
the pale faces of our fellows that Old Cheeseman, unable to 
bear it any longer, got up early and drowned himself 

The mysterious looks of the other masters after breakfast, 
and the evident fact that Old Cheeseman was not expected, 
confirmed the Society in this opinion. Some began to discuss 
whether the President was liable to hanging or only transporta- 
tion for life, and the President’s face showed a great anxiety to 
know wliich. However, he said that a jury of his country 
should find him game ; and that in his address he should put it 
to them to lay their hands upon their hearts, and say whether 
they as Britons approved of informers, and how they thought 
they would like it themselves. Some of the Society considered 
that he had better run away until he found a forest, where he 
might change clothes with a wood-cutter and stain his face with 
blackberries ; but the majority believed that if he stood his 
ground, his father — belonging as he did to the West Indies, and 
being worth Millions — could buy him off. 

All our fellows’ hearts beat fast when the Reverend came in, 
and made a sort of a Roman, or a Field Marshal, of himself 
with the ruler ; as he always did before delivering an address, 
But their fears were nothing to their astonishment when he 
came out with the story that Old Cheeseman, “ so long our 
respected friend and fellow-pilgrim in the pleasant plains of 
knowledge,” he called him — O yes ! I dare say ! .Much of 
that ! — was the orphan child of a disinherited young lady who 
had married against her father’s wish, and whose young husband 
had died, and who had died of sorrow herself, and whose un- 
fortunate baby (Old Cheeseman) had been brought up at the 
15 


THE SCHOOLBOY^ S STORY. 


333 

cost of a grandfather who would never consent to see it, bal)y, 
boy, or man : which grandfather was now dead, and serve him 
right — that’s viy putting in — and which grandlather’s * large 
property, there being no will, was now, and all of a sudden 
and for ever, Old Cheeseman’s ! Our so long and respected 
friend and fellow-pilgrim in the pleasant jdains of knowledge, 
the Reverend wound up a lot of bothering quotations by say- 
ing, would “come among us once more” that day fortnight, 
when he desired to take leave of us himself in a more par- 
ticular manner. With these words he stared severely round at 
our fellows, and went solemnly out. 

There was precious consternation among the members of the 
Society, now. Lots of them wanted to resign, and lots more 
began to try to make out that they had never belonged to it. 
However, the President stuck up, and said that they must stand or 
fall together, and that if a breach was made it should be over 
his body — which was meant to encourage the Society : but it 
didn’t. The President further said, he would consider the 
position in which they stood, and would give them his best 
oi)inion and advice in a few days. This was eagerly looked 
for, as he knew a good deal of the world on account ot his 
father’s being in the West Indies. 

After days and days of hard thinking, and drawing armies all 
over his slate, the President called our fellows together, and 
made the matter clear. He said it was plain that when Old 
Cheeseman came on the appointed day, his first revenge would 
be to impeach the Society, and have it flogged all round. 
After witnessing with joy the torture of his enemies, and gloat- , 
ing over the cries which agony would extort from them, the 
probability was that he would invite the Reverend, on pretence 
of conversation, into a private room — say the parlour into 
which Parents were shown, where the two great globes were 
which were never used — and would there reproach him with 
the various frauds and *opi)ressions he had endured at his 
hands. At the close of his observations he would make a 
signal to a Prizefighter concealed in the passage, who would 
then appear and pitch into the Reverend till he was left - 
insensible. Old Cheeseman would then make Jane a present 
of from five to ten pounds, and would leave the establishinent 
in fiendish triumph ! 

The President explained that against the parlour part, or the 
Jane part, of these arrangements he had nothing to say, but, 
on the part of the Society, he counselled deadly resistance. 
With this view he recommended that all available desks should / 

t. 


THE SCHOOLBOY'S STORY. 


339 


be fill 'd with stones, and that the first word of the complaint 
should be the signal to every fellow to let fly at old Cheeseman. 
d'he bold advice put the Society in better spirits, and was unan- 
imously taken. A jiost about Cheeseman’s size was put up 
in the playground, and all our fellows practised at it till it was 
dinted all over. • 

When the day came, and Places w'ere called, every fellow sat 
down in a tremble. There had been much discussing and dis- 
puting as to how Old Cheeseman would come ; but it was the 
general opinion that he would appear in a sort of triumphal 
car drawn by four horses, with two livery servants in front, and 
the Prizefighter in disguise up behind. So, all our fellows sat 
listening for the sound of wheels. But no wheels were heard, 
for Old Cheeseman walked after all, and came into the school 
without any preparation. Pretty much as he used to be, only 
dressed in black. 

“ Gentlemen,” said the Reverend, presenting him, “ our so 
long respected friend and fellow-pilgrim in the pleasant plains 
of knowledge, is desirous to offer a word or two. Attention, 
gentlemen, one and all.” 

Every fellow stole his hand into his desk and looked at the 
President. The President was all ready, and taking aim at 
Old Cheeseman with his eyes. 

What did old Cheeseman then, but walk up to his old desk, 
look round him with a queer smile as if there was a tear in his 
eye, and begin in a quavering mild voice, “ My dear com[)an- 
ions and old friends ! ” 

Pwery fellow’s hand came out of his desk, and the President 
suddenly began to cry. 

“ My dear com[)anions and old friends,” said Old Cheeseman, 
‘‘ you have heard of my good fortune. I have passed so many 
years under this roof — my entire life so far, I may say — that I 
hope you have been glad to hear of it for my sake. 1 could 
never enjoy it without exchanging congratulations with you. If 
we have ever misunderstood one another at all, pray my dear 
boys let us forgive and forget. I have a great tenderness for 
you, and I am sure you return it. I want in the fullness of a 
grateful heart to shake hands with you every one. I have come 
back to do it, if you please, my dear boys.” 

Since the President had begun to cry, several other fellows 
had broken out here and there : but now, when Old Cheeseman 
began with him as first boy, laid his left hand affectionately on 
his shoulder and gave him his right ; and when the President 
said “ Indeed I don’t deserve it, sir ] upon my honour 1 don’t 


340 


THE SCHOOLBOY'S STORY. 


th^'re was sobbing and crying all over the school. Every other 
fellow said he didn^t deserve it, much in the same way ; but 
old Cheeseman, not minding that a bit, went cheerfully round 
to every boy, and wound up with every master — finishing off 
the Reverend last. 

Then a snivelling little chajirin a corner, who was always un- 
der some punishment or other, set up a shrill cry of “ Success 
to Old Cheeseman ! Hooray ! ” The Reverend glared upon 
him, and said, Mr. Cheeseman, Sir.” But, Old Cheeseman 
protesting that he liked his old name a great deal better than 
his new one, all our fellows took up the cry ; and, for I don’t 
know how many minutes, there was such a thundering of feet 
and hands, and such a roaring of Old Cheeseman, as never was 
heard. 

After that, there was a spread in the dining-room of the 
most magnificent kind. Fowls, tongues, preserves, fruits, con- 
fectioneries, jellies, neguses, barley-sugar temjdes, trilles, 
crackers — eat all you can and pocket what you like — all at 
Old Cheeseman’s expense. After that, speeches, whole holiday, 
double and treble sets of all manners of things for all manners 
of games, donkeys, pony-chaises and drive yourself, dinner for 
all the masters at the Seven Bells {twenty pounds a-head our 
fellows estimated it at), an annual holiday and feast fixed for that 
day every year, and another on Old Cheeseman’s birthday — 
- Reverend bound down before the fellows to allow it, so that he 
could never back out — all at old Cheeseman’s expense. 

And didn’t our fellows go down in a body and cheer outside 
the Seven Bells ? O no ! 

But there’s something else besides. Don’t look at the next 
story-teller, for there’s more yet. Next day, it was resolved 
that the Society should make it up with Jane, and then be dis- 
solved. What do you think of Jane being gone, though. “ What ? 
Gone for ever ? ” said our fellows, with long faces. “ Yes, to 
be sure,” was all the answer they could get. None of the 
people about the house would say anything more. At length, 
the first boy took upon himself to ask the Reverend whether 
our old friend Jane was really gone? The Reverend (he has 
got a daughter at home — turn-up nose, and red) replied severely, 
“ Yes, sir. Miss Pitt is gone.” The idea of calling Jane, Miss 
Pitt ! Some said she had been sent away in disgrace for taking 
money from old Cheeseman ; others said she had gone into 
Old Cheeseman’s service at a rise of ten pounds a year. All 
that our fellows knew, was, she was gone. 

It was two or three months afterwards, when, one afternoon. 


THE SCHOOLBOY^S STORY. 


an open carriage stopped at the cricket field, just outside bounds, 
with a lady and gentleman in it, who looked at the game along 
time and stood up to see it played. Nobody thought much 
about them, until the same little snivelling chap came in against 
all rules, from the post where he was Scout, and said, “ It’s 
Jane ? ” Both Elevens forgot the game directly, and ran crowd- 
ing round the carriage. It was Jane ! In such a bonnet ! 
And if you’ll believe me, Jane was married to Old Cheeseman. 

It soon became quite a regular thing when our fellows were 
hard at it in the playground, to see a carriage at the low part 
'of the wall where it joins the high part, and a lady and gentle- 
man standing up in it, looking over. The gentleman was al- 
ways Old Cheeseman, and the lady was always Jane. 

The first time I ever saw them, I saw them in that way. 
There had been a good many changes among our fellows then, 
and it had turned out that Bob Tartar’s father wasn’t worth 
Millions ! He wasn’t worth anything. Bob had gone for a 
soldier, and Old Cheeseman had purchased his discharge. But 
that’s not the carriage. The carriage stopped, and all our fel- 
lows stopped as soon as it was seen. 

“ So you have never sent me to Coventry after all ! ” said the 
lady, laughing, as our fellows swarmed iq) the wall to shake 
hands with her. “ Are you never going to do it ? ” 

“ Never ! never ! never ! ” on all sides. 

I didn’t understand what she meant then, but of course I 
do now. I was very much pleased with her face though, and 
with her good way, and I couldn’t help looking at her — and at 
him too — with all our fellows clustering so joyfully about them. 

They took notice of me as a new boy, so I thought I might 
as well swarm up the wall myself, and shake hands with them 
as the rest did. 1 was quite as glad to see them as the rest were, 
and was quite as familiar with them in a moment. 

“ Only a fortnight now,” said Old Cheeseman, “ to the holi- 
days. Who stops ? Anybody?” 

A good !nany fingers pointed at me, and a good many voices 
cried, “ He does ! ” for it was tlie year when you were all away ; 
and rather low I was about it, I can tell you. 

“ Oh ! ” said Old Cheeseman. “ But it’s solitary here in the 
holiday time. He had better come to us.” 

So I went to their delightful house, and was as ha|)py as I 
could possibly be. They understand how to conduct themselves 
towards boys, t/iey do. When they take a boy to the play, for 
instance, they do take him. They don’t go in after it’s begun, 
or come out before its over.- They know how to bring a boy 


342 


NOBODY^ S STORY. 


up, too. Look at their own ! Though he is very little as yet, 
what a capital boy he is ! Why, my next favourite to Mrs. 
Cheeseman and Old Cheeseman, is young Cheeseman. 

So, now I have told you all about Old Cheeseman. And it’s 
not much after all, I am afraid. Is it ? 


NOBODY’S STORY. 



E lived on the bank of a mighty river, broad and deep, 
which was always silently rolling on to a vast undis- 
covered ocean. It had rolled on, ever since the world 
began. It had changed its course sometimes, and 
turned into new channels, leaving his old ways dry and barren ; 
but it had ever been upon the flow, and ever was to flow until 
Time should be no more. Against its strong, unfathomable 
stream, nothing made head. No living creature, no flower, no 
leaf, no particle of animate or inanimate existence, ever strayed 
back from the undiscovered ocean. The tide of the river set 
resistlessly towards it ; and the tide never stopped, any more 
than the earth stops in its circling round the sun. 

He lived in a busy place, and he worked very hard to live. 
He had no hope of ever being rich enough to live a month 
without hard work, but he was quite content, God knows, to 
labour with a cheerful will. He was one of an immense family, 
all of whose sons and daughters gained their daily bread by 
daily work, prolonged from their rising up betimes until their 
lying down at night. Beyond this destiny he had no prospect, 
and he sought none. 

There was over-much drumming, trumpeting, and speech- 
making, in the neighbourhood where he dwelt; but he had 
nothing to do with that. Such clash and uproar came from the 
Bigwig family, at the unaccountable proceedings of which race, 
he marvelled much. They set up the strangest statues, in iron, 
marble, bronze, and brass, before his door ; and darkened his 
house with the legs and tails of uncouth images of horses. He 
wondered what it all meant, smiled in a rough good-humoured 
way he had, and kept at his hard work. 

The Bigwig family (composed of all the stateliest people 
thereabouts, and all the noisiest) had undertaken to save him 
the trouble of thinking for himself, and to manage him and his 
affairs. “Why truly,” said he, “I have little time upon my 


NOBODY^ S STORY, 


343 


hands ; and if you will be so good as to take care of me, in re- 
turn for the money I pay over” — for the Bigwig family were not 
above iiis money — “ 1 shall be relieved and much obliged, con- 
sidering that you know best.” Hence the drumming, triim])et- 
ing, and speechmaking, and the ugly images of horses which he 
was expected to fall down and worship. 

“I don’t understand all this,” said he, rubbing his furrowed 
brow confusedly. “ But it has a meaning, maybe, if 1 could 
find it out.” 

“It means,” returned the Bigwig family, suspecting some- 
thing of what he said, “ honour and glory in the highest, to the 
highest merit.” 

“ Oh ! ” said he. And he was glad to hear that. 

But, when he looked among the images in iron, marble, 
bronze, anti brass, he failed to find a rather meritorious coun- 
tryman of his, once the son of a Warwickshire wooldealer, or 
any single countryman whomsoever of that kind. He could 
find none of the men whose knowledge had rescued him and 
his children from terrific and disfiguring disease, whose boldness 
had raised his forefathers from the condition of serfs, whose wise 
fancy had opened a new and high existence to the humblest, 
whose skill had filled the working man’s world with accumulated 
wonders. Whereas, he did find others whom he knew no good 
of, and even others whom he knew much ill of. 

“Humph !” said he. “I don’t quite understand it.” 

So he went home, and sat down by his fire-side to get it out 
of his mind. 

Now, his fire-side was a bare one, all hemmed in by blackened 
streets ; but it was a precious place to liim. Idle hands of his 
wife were hardened with toil, and she was old before her time ; 
but she was dear to him. His children, stunted in their growth, 
bore traces of unwholesome nurture ; but they had beauty in his 
sight. Above all other things, it was an earnest desire of this 
man’s soul that his children should be taught. “If 1 am some- 
times misled,” said he, “for want of knowledge, at least let them 
know better, and avoid my mistakes. If it is hard to me to 
reap the liarvest of pleasure and instruction that is stored in 
books, let it be easier to them.” 

But, the Bigwig family broke out into violent family quarrels 
concerning what it was lawful to teach to this man’s children. 
Some of the family insisted on such a thing being lu imary and 
indispen.sable above all other things ; and others of the family 
insisted on such another thing being primary and indispensable 
above all other things ; and the Bigwig family, rent into factions, 


344 


NOBVDV'S STORY. 


v/rote pamphlets, held convocations, delivered charges, orations, 
and all varieties of discourses ; impounded one another in courts 
Lay and courts Ecclesiastical ; threw dirt, exchanged punimel- 
ings, and fell together by the ears in unintelligible animosity. 
Meanwhile, this man, in his short evening snatches at his fire- 
side, saw the demon Ignorance arise there, and take his children 
to itself. He saw his daughter perverted into a heavy slatternly 
drudge ; he saw his son go moping down the ways of low sen- 
suality, to brutality and crime ; he saw the dawning light of in- 
telligence in the eyes of his babies so changing into cunning and 
suspicion, that he could have rather wished them idiots. 

“1 don’t understand this any the better,” said he; “but I 
think it cannot be right. Nay, by the clouded Heaven above 
me, 1 protest against this as my wrong ! ” 

Becoming peaceable again (for his passion was irsually short- 
lived, and his nature kind), he looked about him on his Sundays 
and holidays, and he saw how much monotony and weariness 
there was, and thence how drunkenness arose with all its train 
of ruin. Then he appealed to the Bigwig family, and said, “ We 
are a labouring people, and I have a glimmering suspicion in 
me that labouring people of whatever condition were made — by 
a higher intelligence than yours, as I poorly understand it-^to 
be in need of mental refreshment and recreation. See what we 
fall into, when we rest without it. Come ! Amuse me harm- 
lessly, show me something, give me an escape ! ” 

But, here the Bigwig family fell into a state of uproar abso- 
lutely deafening. When some few voices were faintly heard, 
proposing to show him the wonders of the world, the greatness 
of creation, the mighty changes of time, the workings of nature 
and the beauties of art — to show him these things, that is to say, 
at any period of his life when he could look upon them — there 
arose among the Bigwigs such roaring and raving, such pulpiting 
and petitioning, such maundering and memorialising, such name- 
calling and dirt-throwing, such a shrill wind of parliamentary 
questioning and feeble re[dying — where “I dare not” waited on 
“ 1 would ” — that the poor fellow stood aghast, staring wildly 
around. 

“ Have 1 ])rovoked all this,” said he, with his hands to his 
affrighted ears, “ by what was meant to be an innocent request, 
plainly arising out of my familiar experience, and the common 
knowledge of all men who choose to open their eyes? 1 don’t 
understand, and I am not understood. What is to come of 
'such a state of things ! ” 

He was bending over his work, often asking himself the ques- 


NOBODY'S STORY. 


345 


tion, when the news began to spread that a pestilence had ap- 
l)eared among the labourers, and was slaying them by thousands. 
Going forth to look about him, he soon found this to be true. 
The dying and the dead were mingled in the close and tainted 
houses among which his life was ])assed. New poison was dis- 
tilled into the always murky, always sickening air. The robust 
and the weak, old age and infancy, the father and the mother, 
all were stricken down alike. 

What means of Hight had he ? He remained there, where he 
was, and saw those who were dearest to him die. A kind 
])reacher came to him, and would have said some prayers to 
soften his heart in his gloom, but he replied : 

“O what avails it, missionary, to come to me, a man con- 
demned to residence in this foetid place, where every sense be- 
stowed upon me for my delight becomes a torment, and where 
every minute of my numbered days is 'new mire added to the 
heap under which I lie oppressed ! But, give me my first 
glimpse of Heaven, through a little of its light and air ; give me 
]»ure Avater ; help me to be clean ; lighten this heavy atmosphere 
and heavy life, in w’hich our s|)irits sink, and we become the in- 
different and callous creatures you too often see us ; gently and 
kindly take the bodies of those who die among us, out of the 
small room w'here we grow to be so familiar with the awful 
change that even its sanctity is lost to us ; and, Teacher, then 
I will hear — none know better than you, how willingly — of Him 
whose thoughts were so much with the poor, and who had com- 
passion for all human sorrow ! ” 

He was at his work again, solitary and sad, when his Master 
came and stood near to him dressed in black. He, also, had 
suffered heavily. His young wife, his beautiful and good young 
wife, was dead ; so, too, his only child. 

“ Master, ’tis hard to bear — I know it — but be comforted. 
I would give you comfort, if I could.” 

The Master thanked him from his heart, but, said he, “O 
you labouring men ! The calamity began among you. If you 
had but lived more healthily and decently, I sHould not be the 
widowed and bereft mourner that 1 am this day.” 

“ Master,” returned the other, shaking his head, “ I have be- 
gun to understand a little that most calamities will come from 
us, as this one did, and that none will stop at our poor doors, 
until we are united with that great squabbling family yonder, to 
do the things that are right. We cannot live healthily and de- 
cently, unless they who undertook to manage us provide the 
means. We cannot be instructed unless they will teach us ; we 
15 * 


346 


NOBODY'S STORY. 


cannot be rationally amused, unless they will amuse us ; we 
cannot but have some false gods of our own, while they set up 
so many of theirs in all the public places. The evil conse- 
quences of imperfect instruction, the evil consequences of per- 
nicious neglect, the evil consequences of unnatural restraint 
and the denial of humanising enjoyments, will all come from us, 
and none of them will stop with us. They will spread far and 
wide. They always do ; they always have done — just like the 
pestilence. I understand so much, 1 think, at last.”- 

But the Master said again, “ O you labouring men! How 
seldom do we ever hear of you, except in connection with some 
trouble 1 ” 

“ Master,” he replied, “ I am Nobody, and little likely to be 
heard of (nor yet much wanted to be heard of, perhaps), ex- 
cept when there is some trouble. But it never begins with me, 
and it never can end with me. As sure as Death, it comes 
down to me, and it goes up from me.” 

There was so much reason in what he said, that the Bigwig 
family, getting wind of it, and being horribly frightened by the 
late desolation, resolved to unite with him to do the things that 
were right — at all events, so far as the said things were associ- 
ated with the direct prevention, humanly speaking, of another 
pestilence. But, as their fear wore off, which it soon began to 
do, they resumed their falling out among •themselves, and did 
nothing. Consequently the scourge appeared again — low down 
as before — and spread avengingly upward as before, and carried 
off vast numbers of the brawlers. But not a man among them 
ever admitted, if in the least degree he ever perceived, that he 
had anything to do with it. 

So Nobody lived and died in the old, old, old way ; and this, 
in the main, is the whole of Nobody’s story. 

Had he no name, you ask ? Perhaps it was Legion. It 
matters little what his name was. Let us call him Legion. 

If you were ever in the Belgian villages near the field of Wa- 
terloo, you will have seen, in some quiet little church, a monu- 
"ment erected by faithful companions in arms to the memory of 
Colonel A, Major B, Captains C, D, and E, Lieutenants F, and 
G, Ensigns H, I, and J, seven non commissioned officers, and 
one hundred and thirty rank and file, who fell in the discharge 
of their duty on the memorable day. The story of Nobody is 
the story of the rank and file of the earth. They bear their 
share of the battle ; they have their part in the victory ; they 
fall ; they leave no name but in the mass. The march of the 
proudest of us, leads to the dusty way by which they go. O ! 


THE GHOST OF ART. 


347 

Let ns think of them this year at the Christmas fire, and not 
forget them when it is burnt out. 


THE GHOST OF ART. 

AM a bachelor, residing in rather a dreary set of 
chambers in the Tem|)le. They are situated in a 
scjuare court of high houses, which would be a com- 
plete well, but for the want of water and the absence 
of a bucket. I live at the top of the house, among the tiles 
and sparrows. Like the little man in the nursery-story, I live 
by myself, and all the bread and cheese I get — which is not 
much — I i)ut upon a shelf. I need scarcely add, perhaps, that 
I am in love, and that the father of my charming Julia objects to 
our union. 

I mention these little particulars as I might deliver a letter of 
introduction. The reader is now acquainted with me, and per- 
haps will condescend to listen to my narrative. 

I am naturally of a dreamy turn of mind ; and my abundant 
leisure — for 1 am called to the bar — coupled with much lonely 
listening to the twittering of sparrows, and the pattering of rain, 
has encouraged that disposition. In my “ top set,” I hear the 
wind howl, on a winter night, when the man on the ground floor 
believes it is perfectly still weather. The dim lamps with which 
our Honourable Society (supposed to be as yet unconscious of 
the new discovery called Gas) make the horrors of the staircase 
visible, deepen the gloom which generally settles on my soul 
when I go home at night. 

I am in the l..aw, but not of it. I can’t exactly make out 
what it means. I sit in Westminster Hall sometimes (in char- 
acter) from ten to four; and when I go out of Court, I don’t 
know whether 1 am standing on my wig or my boots. 

It appears to me (I mention this in confidence) as if there 
were too much talk and too much law — as if some grains of 
truth were started overboard into a temi)estuous sea of chaff. 

All this may make me mystical. Still, I am confident that 
what I am going to describe myself as having seen and heard, 

I actually did see and hear. 

It is necessary that I should observe that I have a great de- 
light in pictures. I am no painter myself, but I have studied., 
pictures and written about them. I have seen all the most fa- 



348 the ghost of art. ' , ; 

moiis pictures in the world ; niy education and reading have 
been sufficiently general to possess me beforehand with a knowl- 
edge of most of the subjects to which a Painter is likely to have 
recourse ; and, although I might be in some doubt as to the 
rightful fashion of the scabbard of King Lear’s sword, for in- 
stance, I think I should know King Lear tolerably well, if 1 
happened to meet with him. 

I go to all the Modern Exhibitions every season, and of 
course I revere the Royal Academy. I stand by its forty 
Academical articles almost as firmly as I stand by the thirty- 
nine Articles of the Church of England. 1 am convinced that 
in neither case could there be, by any rightful possibility, one 
article more or less. 

It is now exactly three years — three years ago, this very 
month — since I went from Westminster to the Temple, one 
Thursday afternoon, in a cheap steam-boat. The sky was black, 
when I imprudently walked on board. It began to thunder and 
lighten immediately afterwards, and the rain poured down in 
torrents. The deck seeming to smoke with the wet, I went 
below; but so many passengers were there, smoking too, that 
I came up again, and buttoning my pea coat, and standing in 
the shadow of the paddle box, stood as upright as I could, and 
made the best of it. 

It was at this moment that I first beheld the terrible Being, 
who is the subject of my present recollections. 

Standing against the funnel, apparently with the intention of 
drying himself by the heat as fast as he got wet, was a shabby 
man in threadbare black, and with his hands in his pockets, who 
fascinated me from the memorable instant when I caught his 
eye. 

Where had I caught that eye before ? Who was he ? Why 
did I connect him, all at once, with the Vicar of Wakefield, 
Alfred the Great, Gil Bias, Charles the Second, Joseph and his 
Brethern, the Eairy Queen, Tom Jones, the Decameron of 
Boccaccio, Tam O’Shanter, the Marriage of the Doge of Venice 
with the Adriatic, and the Great Plague of London ? Why, 
when he bent one leg, and placed one hand upon the back pf 
the seat near him, did my mind associate him wildly with the 
words, “ Number one hundred and forty-two. Portrait of a gen- 
tleman ? ” Could it be that I was going mad ? 

I looked at him again, and now I could have taken my affi- 
davit that he belonged to the Vicar of Wakefield’s family. 

Whether he was the Vicar, or Moses, or Mr. Burchill, or the 
Squire, or a conglomeration of all four, I knew not ; but I was 


THE GHOST OF ART. 


349 


impelled to seize him by the throat, and charge him with being, 
in some fell way, conected with the Primrose blood. He 
looked lip at the rain, and then — oh Heaven ! — he became Saint 
John. He folded his arms, resigning himself to the weather, 
and I was frantically inclined to address him as the Spectator, 
and firmly demand to know what he had done with Sir Roger 
de Coverley. 

The frightful suspicion that I was becoming deranged, re- 
turned upon me with redoubled force. Meantime, this awful 
stranger, inexplicably linked to my distress, stood drying him- 
self at the funnel ; and ever, as the steam rose from his 
clothes, diffusing a mist around him, 1 saw through the ghostly 
medium all the people I have mentioned, and a score more, 
sacred and profane. 

1 am conscious of a dreadful inclination that stole upon me, 
as it thundered and lightened, to grapple with this man, or 
demon, and plunge him over the side. But, I constrained my- 
self — I know not how — to speak to him, and in a pause of the 
storm, I crossed the deck, and said : 

“ What are you ? ” 

He replied, hoarsely, “A Model.” 

“ A what? ” said I. 

“ A Model,” he replied. “ I sets to the profession for a bob 
a-hour.” (All through this narrative I give his own words, 
which are indelibly imprinted on my memory.) 

The relief which this disclosure gave me, the exquisite de- 
light of the restoration of my confidence in my own sanity, I 
cannot describe. I should have fallen on his neck, but for 
the consciousne.ss of being observed by the man at the wheel. 

“ You then,” said I, shaking him so warmly by the hand, that 
I rung the rain out of his coat-cuff, “ are the gentleman whom I 
have so frequently contemplated, in connection with a high- 
backed chair with a red cushion, and a table with twisted 
legs.” 

“ I am that Model,” he rejoined moodily, “ and I wish 1 was 
anything else.” 

“ Say not so,” I returned. “I have seen you in the society 
of many beautiful young women ; ” as in truth I had, and always 
(I now remember) in the act of making the most of his legs. 

“ No doubt,” said he. “ And you’ve seen me along with 
warses of flowers, and any number of table-kivers, and antique 
cabinets, and warious gammon.” 

“ Sir ? ” said I. 

“ And warious gammon,” he repeated, in a louder voice. 


350 


THE GHOST OF ART 


“You might have seen mein armour, too, if you had looked 
sharp. Blessed if I ha’ n’t stood in half the suits of armour as 
ever came out of Pratt’s shop : and sat, for weeks together, a- 
eating nothing, out of half the gold and silver dishes as has ever 
been lent for the |)urpose out of Storrses, and Mortimerses, or 
(jarrardses, and Davenportseseses.” 

Excited, as it ap])eared, by a sense of injury, I thought he 
never would have found an end for the last word. But, at 
length it rolled sullenly away with the thunder. 

“ Pardon me,” said I, “ you are a well-favoured, well-made 
man, and yet — forgive me — I find, on examining my mind, that 
1 associate you with — that my recollection indistinctly makes 
you, in short — excuse me — a kind of powerful monster.” 

“It would be a wonder if didn’t,” he said. “ Do you know 
what my jioint-s are ? ” 

“ No,” said 1. 

“My throat and my legs,” said he. “When t don’t set for 
a head, I mostly sets for a throat and a pair of legs. Now, 
granted you was a painter, and was to work at my throat for a 
week together, 1 suppose you’d see a lot of lumps and bumps 
there, that would never be there at all, if you looked at me, 
complete, instead of only my throat. Wouldn’t you.?” 

“ Probably,” said I, surveying him. 

“Why, it stands to reason,” said the Model. “Work an- 
other week at my legs, and it’ll be the same thing. You’ll 
rnak’em out as knotty and as knobby, at last, as if they was the 
trunks of two old trees. Then, take and stick my legs and throat 
to another man’s body, and you’ll make a reg’lar monster. And 
that’s the way the ])ublic gets their reg’lar monsters, every first 
Monday in May, when the Royal Academy Exhibition opens.” 

“You are a critic,” said I, with an air of deference. 

“ Pm in an uncommon ill-humour, if that’s it,” rejoined the 
Model, with great indignation. “ As if it warn’t bad enough 
for a bob a-hour, for a man to be mixing himself uj) with that 
there jolly old furniter that one one’ud think the public know’d 
the wery nails in by this time — or to be putting on greasy old 
ats and 'cloaks, and ])laying tambourines in the Bay o’ Najdes, 
with Wesuvius a smokin’ according to ""pattern in the back- 
ground, and the wines a bearing wonderful in the middle dis- 
tance — or to be unpolitely kicking uj) his legs among a lot o’ 
gals, with no reason whateyer in his mind, but to show’em — as 
if this warn’t bad enough, Pm to go and be thrown out of em- 
ployment too ! ” 

“ Surely no ! ” said 1. 


THE GHOST OF ART. 


351 

“ Surely yes/’ said the indignant Model. “ But I’ll grow 

ONE.” 

The gloomy and threatening manner in which he muttered 
the last words, can never be effaced from my remembrance. 
My blood ran cold. 

1 asked of myself, what was it that this desperate being was 
resolved to grow? My breast made no response. 

I ventured to implore him to explain his meaning. With a 
scornful laugh, he uttered this dark prophecy : 

“ I’ll grow one. And, mark my words, it shall haunt 

YOU ! ” 

We parted in the storm, after I had forced half-a-crown on 
his acceptance, with a trembling hand. I conclude that some- 
thing supernatural happened to the steam-boat, as it bore his 
reeking figure down the river ; but it never got into the pai)ers. 

Two years elapsed, during which 1 followed my profession 
without any vicissitudes ; never holding so much as a motion, of 
course. At the expiration of that period, 1 found myself mak- 
ing my way home to the Temple, one night, in precisely such 
another storm of thunder and lightning as that by which J had 
been overtaken on board the steam boat — except that this storm, 
bursting over the town at midnight, was rendered much more 
awful by the darkness and the hour. 

As 1 turned into my court, I really thought a thunderbolt 
would fall, and plough the pavement up. Every brick and stone 
in the place seemed to have an echo of its own for the thunder. 
The w'ater-spouts were overcharged, and the rain came tearing 
down from the house-tops as if they had been mountain-tops. 

Mrs. Parkins, my laundress — wife of Parkins the porter, then 
newly dead of a dropsy — had particular instructions to place a 
bedroom candle and a match under the staircase lamp on my 
landing, in order that 1 might light my candle there, w’henever 1 
came home. Mrs. Parkins invariably disregarding all instruc- 
tions, they were never there. Thus it happened that on this 
occasion 1 groped my way into my sitting-room to find the can- 
dle, and came out to light it. 

What were my emotions when, underneath the staircase lamp, 
shining wuth w^et as if he had never been dry since our last meet- 
ing, stood the mysterious Being whom 1 had encountered on the 
steam -boat in a thunder-storm, two years before ! His .predic- 
tion rushed ui)on my mind, and I turned faint. 

“ I said I’d do it,” he observed, in a hollow voice, “ and I 
have done it. May I come in ? ” 

“Misguided creature, what have you done?” I returned. 


'352 


IHE on OS 7 Of .If 7. 


“I’ll let you know,” was his reply, “if you’ll let me in.” 

Could it be murder that he had done ? And had lie been so 
successful that he wanted to do it again, at my expense ? 

I hesitated. 

“ May 1 come in ? ” said he. 

I inclined my head, with as much presence of mind as I 
could command, and he followed me into my chambers, 
d'here 1 saw that the lower part of his face was tied up, in what 
is commonly called a Belcher handkerchief. He slowly re- 
moved this bandage, and exposed to view a long dark beard, 
curling over his upper lip, twisting about the corners of his 
mouth, and hanging down upon his breast. 

“ What is this ? ” I exclaimed involuntarily, “ and what have 
you become ? ” 

“ 1 am the Ghost of Art ! ” said he. 

The effect of these words, slowly uttered in the thunder storm 
at midnight, was appalling in the last degree. More dead than 
alive, I surveyed him in silence. 

“ The German taste came up,” said he, “and threw me out 
of bread. I am ready for the taste now.” 

He made his beaid a little jagged with his hands, folded his 
arms, and said, 

“ Severity ! ” 

I shudered. It was so severe. 

He made his beard flowing on his breast, and, leaning both 
hands on the staff of a carpet-broom which Mrs. Parkins had 
left among my books, said : 

“ Benevolence.” 

I stood transfixed. The change of sentiment was entirely in 
the beard. The man might have left his face alone, or had no 
face. The beard did everthing. 

He lay down, on his back, on my table, and with that action 
of his head threw up his beard at the chin. 

“That’s death ! ” said he. 

He got off my table and, looking up at the ceiling, cocked 
his beard a little awry ; at the same time making it stick out 
before him. 

“ Adoration, or a vow of vengeance,” he observed. 

He turned his profile to me, making his upper lip very bulgy 
with the upper part of his beard. 

“ Romantic character,” said he. 

He looked sideways, out of his beard, as if it were an ivy- 
bush. “ Jealousy,” said he. He gave it an ingenious twist in 
the air, and informed me that he was carousing. Ife made it 


OC/T OF TOWN. 


353 


shaggy with his fingers — and it was Despair ; lank — and it was 
avarice ; tossed it all kind of ways — and it was rage. The 
beard did everthing. 

“I am the Ghost of Art,” said he. “Two bob a-day now, 
and more when it’s longer ! flair’s the true expression. There 
is no other. I said I’d grow it, and I’ve grown it and it 

SHALL HAUNT YOU ! ” 

He may have tumbled down stairs in the dark, but he never 
walked down or ran down. 1 looked over the banisters, and 1 
was alone with the thunder. 

Need I add more of my terrific fate ? It has haunted me 
ever since. It glares upon me from the walls of the Royal 
Academy, (except when Maclise subdues it to his genius,) it 
fills my soul with terror at the British Institution, it lures young 
artists on to their destruction. Go where I will, the Ghost of 
Art, eternally working the passions in hair, and expressing every- 
thing by beard, pursues me. The prediction is accomplished, 
and the victim has no rest. 


OUT OF TOWN. 

ITTING, on a bright September morning, among my 
books and papers at my open window on the cliff over- 
hanging the sea beach, I have the sky and ocean framed 
before me like a beautiful picture. A beautiful ificture, 
but with such movement in it, such changes of light upon the sails 
of ships and wake of steamboats, such dazzling gleams of silver 
far out at sea, such fresh touches on the crisp wave-tops as they 
break and roll towards me — a picture with such music in the 
billowy rush upon the shingle, the blowing of the morning wind 
through the corn-sheaves where the farmers’ wagons are busy, 
the singing of the larks, and the distant voices of children at 
])lay — such charms of sight and sound as all the Galleries on 
earth can but j^oorly suggest. 

So dreamy is the murmur of the sea below my window, that 
I may have been here, for anything I know, one hundred years. 
Not that I have grown old, for daily on the neighbouring downs 
and grassy lull-sides, I find that I can still in reason walk any 
distance, jump over anything, and climb up anywhere ; but, that 
the sound of the ocean seems to have become so customary to 
my musings, and other realities seem so to have-gone a-board 



354 


OUT OF TOWN. 


ship and floated away over the horizon, that, for aught I will 
undertake to the contrary, I am the enchanted son of the King, 
my father, shut up in a tower on the sea-shore, for protection 
against an old she-goblin who insisted on being my godmother, 
and who foresaw at the font — wonderful creature ! — that I should 
get into a scrape before I was twenty-one. I remember to have 
been in a City (my Royal parent’s dominions, I suppose) and 
apparently not long ago either, that was in the dreariest condition. 
The principal inhabitants had all been changed into old news- 
papers, and in that form were preserving their window-blinds from 
dust, and wrapping all their smaller household gods in curl-papers. 
I walked through gloomy streets where every house was shut up 
and newspapered, and where my solitary footsteps echoed on 
the deserted pavements. In the public rides there were no 
carriages, no horses, no animated existence, but a few sleepy 
policemen, and a few adventurous boys taking advantage of the 
devastation to swarm up the lamp-posts. In the Westward streets 
there was no trafflc ; in the Westward shops, no business. The 
water-patterns which the ’Prentices had trickled out on the pave- 
ments early in the morning, remained uneffaced by human feet. 
At the corners of mews, Cochin-China fowls stalked gaunt and 
savage ; nobody being left in the deserted citj (as it appeared 
to me), to feed them. Public Houses, where splendid footmen 
swinging their legs over gorgeous hammer-clothes beside wigged 
coachmen were wont to regale, were silent, and the unused 
])ewter pots shone, too bright for business, on the shelves, j 
beheld a Punch’s Show leaning against a wall near Park Lane, 
as if it had fainted. It was deserted, and there were none to 
heed its desolation. In Belgrave Square I met the last man — 
an ostler — sitting on a post in a ragged red waistcoat, eating 
straw, and mildewing away. 

If I recollect the name of the little town, on whose shore this 
sea is murmuring — but I am not just now, as I have premised, 
to be relied upon for anything — it is Pavilionstone. Within a 
quarter of a century, it was a little fishing town, and they do say, 
that the time was, when it was a little smuggling town. I have 
heard that it was rather famous in the hollands and brandy way, 
and that coevally with that reputation the lamplighter’s was con- 
sidered a bad life at the Assurance offices. It was observed 
that if he were not particular about lighting up, he lived in peace ; 
but, that if he made the best of the oil-lamps in the steep and 
narrow streets, he usually fell over the cliff at an early age. 
Now, gas and electricity run to the very water’s edge, and the 


OUT OF TOWN. 


355 

South Eastern Railway Company screech at us in the dead of 
night. 

But, the old little fishing and smuggling town remains, and is 
so tempting a place for the latter purpose, that I think of going 
out some night next week, in a fur cap and a pair of petticoat 
trousers, and running an empty tub, as a kind of archaeological 
pursuit. Let nobody with corns come to Pavilionstone, or there 
are break-neck flights of ragged steps, connecting the principal 
streets by back-ways, which will cripple that visitor in half an 
hour. These are the ways by which, when I run that tub, I 
shall escape. 1 shall make a Thermopylae of the corner of one 
of them, defend it with my cutlass against the coast-guard until 
my brave companions have sheered off, then dive into the dark- 
ness, and regain my Susan’s arms. In connection with these 
break neck steps I observe some wooden cottages, with tumble- 
down out-houses, and back-yards three feet square, adorned 
with garlands of dried fish, in which (though the General Board 
of Health might object) my Susan dwells. 

The South Eastern Company have brought Pavilionstone in- 
to such vogue, with their tidal trains and splendid steam-packets, 
that a new Pavilionstone is rising up. I am, myself, of New 
Pavilionstone. We are a little mortary and limey at ]n*esent, 
but we are getting on capitally. Indeed, we were getting on so 
fast, at one time, that we rather overdid it, and built a street of 
shops, the business of which may be expected to arrive in about 
ten years. We are sensibly laid out in general ; and with a little 
care and pains (by no means wanting, so far), shall become a 
very pretty place. We ought to be, for our situation is delight- 
ful, our air is delicious, and our breezy hills and downs, car- 
peted with wild thyme, and decorated with millions of wild 
flowers, are, on the faith of a pedestrain, perfect. In New 
Pavilionstone we are a little too much addicted to small windows 
with more bricks in them than glass, and we are not over-fanci- 
ful in the way of decorative architecture, and we get unexpected 
sea-views through cracks in the street-doors ; on the whole, 
however, we are very snug and comfortable, and well accom- 
modated. But the Home Secretary (if there be such an officer) 
cannot too soon shut up the burial-ground of this old parish 
church. It is in the midst of us, and Pavilionstone will get no 
good of it, if it be too long left alone. 

The lion of Pavilionstone is its Great Hotel. A dozen years 
ago, going over to Paris by South-Eastern Tidal Steamer, you 
used to be dropped upon the platform of the main line, Pavilion- 
stone Station (not a junction then) at eleven o’clock on a dark 


OUT OF TOWN. 


35*5 

winter’s night, in a roaring wind; and in the howling wilderness 
outside the station, was a short omnibus which brought you uj) 
by the forehead the instant you got in at the door ; and nobody 
cared about you, and you were alone in the world. You bumped 
over infinite chalk, until you were turned out at a strange build- 
ing which had just left off being a barn without having quite be- 
gun to be a house, where nobody expected your coming, or 
knew what to do with you when you were come, and where you 
were usually blown about, until you happened to be blown 
against the cold beef, and finally into bed. At five in the morn- 
ing you were blown out of bed, and after a dreary breakfast, 
with crumpled company, in the midst of confusion, were hustled 
on board a steamboat and lay wretched on deck until you saw 
France lunging and surging at you with great vehemence over 
the bowsprit. 

Now, you come down to Pavilionstone in a free and easy 
manner, an irresponsible agent, made over in trust to the 
South-Eastern Company, until you get out of the railway-car- 
riage at high-water mark. If you are crossing by the boat at 
once, you have nothing to do but walk on board and be happy 
there if you can — I can’t. If you are going to our Great Pavil- 
ionstone Hotel, the sprightliest porters under the sun, whose 
cheerful looks are a pleasant welcome, shoulder your luggage, 
drive it off in vans, bowl it away in trucks, and enjoy them- 
selves in playing athletic games with it. If you are for public 
life at our great Pavilionstone Hotel, you walk iuto that estab- 
lishment as if it were your club ; and find ready for you, your 
news-room, dining-room, smoking-room, billiard-room, music- 
room, public breakfast, public dinner twice a-day (one plain, 
one gorgeous), hot baths and cold baths. If you want to be 
bored, there are plenty of bores always ready for you, and from 
Saturday to Monday in particular, you can be bored (if you 
like it) through and through. Should you want to be private 
at our Great Pavilionstone Hotel, say but the word, look at 
the list of charges, choose your floor, name your figure — there 
you are, established in your castle, by the day, week, month, or 
year, innocent of all comers or goers, unless you have my fancy 
for walking early in the morning down the groves of boots and 
shoes, which so regularly flourish at all the chamber-doors be- 
fore breakfast, that it seems to me as if nobody ever got up or 
took them in. Are you going across the Alps, and would you 
like to air your Italian at our Great Pavilionstone Hotel ? 
Talk to the Manager — always conversational, accomplished, 
and polite. Do you want to be aided, abetted, comforted, or 


OUT OF TOWN. 


357 


advised, at our Great Pavilionstone Hotel ? Send for the good 
landlord, and he is your friend. Should you, or anyone belong- 
ing to you, ever be taken ill at our Great Pavilionstone Hotel, 
you will not soon forget him or his kind wife. And when you 
pay your bill at our Great Pavilionstone Hotel, you will not be 
l)ut out of humour by anything you find in it. 

A thoroughly good inn, in the days of coaching and posting, 
was a noble place. But, no such inn would have been equal to 
the reception of four or five hundred peojfie, all of them wet 
through, and half of them dead sick, every day in the year. 
This is where we shine, in our Pavilionstone Hotel. Again — 
who, coming and going, pitching and tossing, boating and train- 
ing, hurrying in, and flying out, could ever have calculated the 
fees to be paid at an old-fashioned house ? In our Pavilion- 
stone Hotel vocabulary, there is no such word as fee. Every- 
thing is done for you ; every service is provided at a fixed and 
reasonable charge ; all the prices are hung up in all the rooms ; 
and you can make out your own bill beforehand, as well as the 
book-keeper. 

In the case of your being a pictorial artist, desirous of study- 
ing at small expense the physiognomies and beards of different 
nations, come, on receipt of this, to Pavilionstone. You shall 
find all the nations of the earth, and all the styles of shaving 
and not shaving, hair-cutting and hair letting alone, for ever 
flowing through our Hotel. Couriers you shall see by hun- 
dreds ; fat leathern bags for five-franc pieces, closing with vio- 
lent snaps, like discharges of fire-arms, by thousands ; more 
luggage in a morning than, fifty years ago, all Europe saw in a 
week. Looking at trains, steamboats, sick travellers, and lug- 
gage, is our great Pavilionstone recreation. We are not strong 
in other public amusements. We have a Literary a'nd Scientific 
Institution, and we have a Working Men’s Institution — may it 
hold many gipsy holidays in summer fields, with the kettle boil- 
ing, the band of music playing, and the people dancing ; and 
may I be on the hill-side, looking on with pleasure at a whole- 
some sight too rare in England ! — and we have two or three 
churches, and more chapels than I have yet added up. But 
public amusements are scarce with us. If a poor theatrical 
manager comes with his company to give us, in a loft, Mary 
Bax, or the Murder on the Sand Hills, we don’t care much for 
him — starve him out, in fact. We take more kindly to wax- 
work, especially if it moves ; in which case it keeps much 
clearer of the second commandment than when it is still. 
Cooke’s Circus (Mr. Cooke is my friend, and always leaves a 


358 


OUT OF TOWN. 


good name' behind him), gives us only a night in j^assing 
through. Nor does the travelling menagerie think us worth a 
longer visit. It gave us a look-in the other day, bringing with 
it the residentiary van with the stained glass windows, which 
Her Majesty kept ready-made at Windsor Castle, until she 
found a suitable opportunity of submitting it for the proprietor’s 
acceptance. 1 brought away five wonderments from this exhi- 
bition. I have wondered ever since. Whether the beasts ever 
do get used to those small places of confinement ; Whether 
the monkeys have that very horrible flavour in their free state ; 
Whether wild animals have a natural ear for time and tune, and 
therefore every four-footed creature began to howl in despair 
when the band began to play ; What the giraffe does with his 
neck when his cart is shut up ; and. Whether the elephant feels 
ashamed of himself when he is brought out of his den to stand 
on his head in the presence of the whole Collection. 

We are a tidal harbour at Pavilionstone, as indeed I have im- 
plied already in my mention of tidal trains. At low water, we are 
a heap of mud, with an empty channel in it where a couple of 
men in big boots always shovel and scoop : with what exact 
object, 1 am unable to say. At that time, all the stranded fish- 
ing-boats turn over on their sides, as if they were dead marine 
monsters ; the colliers and other shipping stick disconsolate in 
the mud ; the steamers look as if their white chimneys would 
never smoke more, and their red paddles never turn again ; the 
green sea-slime and weed upon the rough stones at the entrance, 
seem records of obsolete high tides never more Jo flow ; the flag- 
staff-halyards droop ; the very little wooden lighthouse shrinks 
in the idle glare of the sun. And here I may observe of the 
very little wooden lighthouse, that when it is lighted at night, — • 
red and green, — it looks so like a medical man’s, that several 
distracted husbands have at various times been found, on oc- 
casions of premature domestic anxiety, going round and round 
it, trying to find the Nightbell. 

But, the moment the tide begins to make, the Pavilionstone 
Harbor begins to revive. It feels the breeze of the rising water 
before the water comes, and begins to flutter and stir. Wlien 
die little shallow waves creep in, barely overlajiping one 
another, the vanes at the mastheads wake, and become agitated. 
As the tide rises, the fishing-boats get into good spirits and 
dance, the flagstaff hoists a bright red flag, the steamboat 
smokes, cranes creak, horses and carriages dangle in the air, 
stray ])assengers and luggage appear. Now, the shipping is 
afloat, and comes up buoyantly, to look at the wharf. Now, 


OUT OF THE SEAS OH. 


359 


the carts that have come down for coals, load away as hard as 
they can load. Now, the steamer smokes immensely, and oc- 
casionally blows at the paddle-boxes like a vaporous whale — ■ 
greatly disturbing nervous loungers. Now, both the tide and 
the breeze have risen, and you are holding your hat on (if you 
want to see how the ladies hold ^/leir hats on, with a stay, pass- 
ing over the broad brim and down the nose, come to Pavilion- 
stone). Now, everything in the harbour splashes, dashes, and 
bobs. Now, the Down Tidal Train is telegraphed, and yo\i 
know (without knowing how you know), that two hundred and 
eighty-seven people are coming. Now, the fishing-boats that 
have been out, sail in at the top of the tide. Now, the bell 
goes, and the locomotive hisses and shrieks, and the train comes 
gliding in, and the two hundred and eighty-seven come scuf- 
lling out. Now, there is not only a tide of water, but a tide of 
people, and a tide of luggage — all tumbling and flowi»g and 
bouncing about together. Now, after infinite bustle, the steamer 
steams out, and we (on the Pier) are all delighted when she 
rolls as if she would roll her funnel out, and are all disappointed 
when she don’t. Now, the other steamer is coming in, and the 
Custom-House prepares, and the wharf-labourers assemble, and 
the hawsers are made ready, and the Hotel Porters come rat- 
tling down with van and truck, eager to begin more Olympic 
games with more luggage. And this is the way in which we go 
on, down at Pavilionstone, every tide. And, if you want to live 
a life of luggage, or to see it lived, or to breathe sweet air which 
will send you to sleep at a moment’s notice at any period of the 
day or night, or to disport yourself upon or in the sea, or to 
scamper about Kent, or to come out of town for the enjoyment 
of all or any of those pleasures, come to Pavilionstone. 


OUT OF THE SEASON. 

IT fell to my lot, this last bleak Spring, to find myself 
in a watering-place out of the Season. A vicious north- 
I east squall blew me into it from foreign parts, and I 
tarried in it alone for three days, resolved to be ex- 
ceedingly busy. 

On the first day, I began business by looking for two hours 
at the sea, and staring the P'oreign Militia out of countenance. 
Having disposed of these important engagements, 1 sat down 




36 o 


OUT OF THE SEASON. 


at one of the two windows of my room, intent on doing some- 
thing desperate in the way of literary composition, and writing 
a chapter of unheard-of excellence — with which the present 
essay has no connexion. 

It is a remarkable quality in a watering-place out of the sea- 
son, that everything in it, will and must be looked at. 1 had 
no previous suspicion of this fatal truth ; but, the moment I sat 
down to write, I began to perceive it. I had scarcely fallen 
into my most promising attitude, and dipped my pen in the ink, 
when I found the clock upon the pier — a redfaced clock with 
a white rim — importuning me in a highly vexatious manner to 
consult my watch, and see hovy I was off for Gi^enwich time. 
Having no intention of making a voyage or taking an observa- 
tion, I had not the least need of Greenwich time, and could 
have put up with watering-place time as a sufficiently accurate 
articl#. The pier-clock, however, persisting, I felt it necessary 
to lay down my pen, compare my watch with him, and fall into 
a grave solicitude about half-seconds. 1 had taken up my pen 
again, and was about to commence that valuable chapter, when 
a Custom-house cutter under the window requested that 1 would 
hold a naval review of her, immediately. 

It was impossible, under the circumstances, for any mental 
resolution, merely human, to dismiss the Custom-house cutter, 
because the shadow of her topmast fell upon my paper, and 
the vane played on the masterly blank chapter. I was there- 
fore under the necessity of going to the other window ; sitting 
astride of the chair there, like Napoleon bivouacking in the 
print ; and inspecting the cutter as she lay, all that day, in the 
way of my chapter, O ! She was rigged to carry a quantity of 
canvas, but her hull was so very small that four giants aboard 
of her (three men and a boy) who where vigilantly scraping at 
her, all together, inspired me with a terror least they should 
scrape her away. A fifth giant, who appeared to consider him- 
self “ below ” — as indeed he was, from the waist downwards — 
meditated, in such close proximity with the little gusty chimney- 
pipe that he seemed to be smoking it. Several boys looked 
on from the wharf, and, when the gigantic attention appeared 
to be fully occupied, one or other of these would furtively 
swing himself in mid-air over the Custom-house cutter, by 
means of a line pendant from her rigging, like a young spirit of 
the storm. Presently, a sixth hand brought down two little 
water-casks ; presently afterwards, a truck came, and delivered 
a hamper. I was now under an obligation to consider that the 
cutter was going on a cruise, and to wonder where she was go- 


OUT OF THE SEASON. 


3^1 

ing, and when she was going, and why she was going, and at 
what date she might be expected back, and who commanded 
her ? With these pressing questions I was fully occupied when 
the Packet, making ready to go across, and blowing off her 
spare steam, roared, “ Look at me ! ” 

It became a positive duty to look at the Packet preparing to 
go across ; aboard of which, the people newly come down by 
the railroad were hurrying in a great fluster. The crew had 
got their tarry overalls on — and one knew what that meant — 
not to mention the white basins, ranged in neat little piles of a 
dozen each, behind the door of the after-cabin. One lady as I 
looked, one Resigning and far-seeing woman, took her basin 
from the store of crockery, as she might have taken a refresh- 
ment-ticket, laid herself down on deck with that utensil at her 
ear, muffled her feet in one shawl, solemnly covered her coun- 
tenance after the antique manner with another, and on the 
completion of these preparations appeared by the strength of 
her volition to become insensible. The mail-bags (O that I 
myself had the sea-legs of a mail-bag!) were tumbled aboard; 
the Packet left off roaring, warped out, and made at the white 
line upon the bar. One dip, one roll, one break of the sea 
over her bows, and Moore’s Almanack or the sage Raphael 
could not have told me more of the state of things aboard, than 
I knew. 

The famous chapter was all but begun now, and would have 
been quite begun, but for the wund. It was blowing stiffly from 
the east, and it rumbled in the chimney and shook the house. 
That was not much ; but, looking out into the wind’s grey eye 
for inspiration, I laid down my pen again to make the remark 
to myself, how emphatically everything by the sea declare^ that 
it has a great concern in the state of the wind. The trees 
blown all one way; the defences of the harbour reared highest 
and strongest against the raging point ; the shingle flung up pn 
the beach from the same direction ; the number of arrows 
pointed at the common enemy ; the sea tumbling in and rush- 
ing towards them as if it were inflamed by the sight. This put 
it in my head that I really ought to go out and take a walk in 
the wind ; so, I gave up the magnificent chapter for that day, 
entirely persuading myself that I was under a moral obligation 
to have a blow. 

I had a good one, and that on the high road — the very high 
road — on the top of the cliffs, where I met the stage-coach with 
all the outsides holding their hats on and themselves too, 
and overtook a flock of sheep with the wool about their necks 
10 


OUT OF THE SEASON. 


362 

blown into such great rufifs that they looked like fleecy owls. 
The wind played upon the lighthouse as if it were a great 
whistle, the spray was driven over the sea in a cloud of ha/e, 
the ships rolled and pitched heavily, and at intervals long slants 
and flaws of light luade mountain-steeps of communication be- 
tween the ocean and the sky. A walk of ten miles brought me 
to a seaside town without a cliff, which, like the town I had 
come from, was out of the season too. Half of the houses 
were shut up ; half of the other half were to let ; the town 
might have done as much business as it was doing then, if it had 
been at the bottom of the sea. Nobody seemed to flourish save 
the attorney ; his clerk’s pen was going in the bow-window of 
his wooden house ; his brass door-plate alone was free from 
salt, and had been polished that morning. On the beach, 
among the rough luggers and capstans, groups of storm-beaten 
boatmen, like a sort of marine monsters, watched under the lee 
of those objects, or stood leaning forward against the wind, 
looking out through battered spy-glasses. The parlour in the 
Admiral Benbow had grown so flat with being out of season, 
that neither could I hear it ring when I pulled the handle for 
lunch, nor could the young woman in black stockings and strong 
shoes, who acted as waiter out of the season, until it had been 
tinkled three times. 

Admiral Benbow’ s cheese was out of the season, but his home- 
made bread was good, and his beer was perfect. Deluded by 
some earlier spring day which had been warm and sunny, the 
Admiral had cleared the firing out of his parlour stove, and had 
put some flower-pots in — which was amiable and hopeful in the 
Admiral, but not judicious : the room being, at that present visit- 
ing, trancendently cold. I therefore took the liberty of i)eep- 
ing out across a little stone passage into the Admiral’s kitchen, 
and, seeing a high settle with its back towards me drawn 
out in front of the Admiral’s kitchen fire, I strolled in, bread 
*and cheese in hand, munching and looking about. One lands- 
man and two boatmen were seated on the settle, smoking pipes 
and drinking beer out of thick pint crockery mugs — mugs pe- 
culiar to such places, with parti-coloured rings round them, and 
ornaments between the rings like frayed-out roots. The lands- 
man was relating his experience, as yet only three nights’ old, 
of a fearful running-down case in the Channel, and therein 
presented to my imagination a sound of music that it will not 
soon forget. 

“ At that identical moment of time,” said he (he was a prosy 
man by nature, who rose with his subject), “ the night being 


OUT OF THE SEASON. 


3C3 


light and calm, but with a grey mist upon the water that didn’t 
seem to spread for more than two or three mile, I was walking 
up and down the wooden causeway next the pier, off where it 
happened, along with a friend of mine, which his name is Mr. 
docker. Mr. docker is a grocer over yonder.” (From the 
direction in which he pointed the bowl of his pipe, I might have 
judged Mr. docker to be a Merman, established in the grocery 
trade in five-and-twenty fathoms of water.) “We were smok- 
ing our pipes, and walking up and down the causeway, talking 
of one thing and talking of another. We were quite alone there, 
except that a few hovellers” (the Kentish name for ’long-shore 
boatmen like his companions) “ were hanging about their lugs, 
waiting while the tide made, as hovellers will.” (One of the 
two boatmen, thoughtfully regarding me, shut up one eye, this 
I understood to mean : first, that he took me into the conver- 
sation : secondly, that he confirmed the proposition : thirdly that 
he announced himself as a hoveller.) “All of a sudden Mr. 
docker ancl me stood rooted to the spot, by hearing a sound 
come through the stillness, right over the sea, like a great 
sorrowful flute or yEolian harp. We didn’t in the least know 
what it was, and judge of our surprise when we saw the hovel- 
lers, to a man, leap into the boats and tear about to hoist a sail 
and get off, as if they had every one of ’em gone, in a moment, 
raving mad ! But they knew it was the cry of distress from the 
sinking emigrant ship.” 

When 1 got back to my watering-place out of the season, and 
had done my twenty miles in good style, I found that the cele- 
brated Black Mesmerist intended favouring the public that 
evening in the Hall of the Muses, which he had engaged for 
the purpose. After a good dinner, seated by the fire in an easy 
chair, I began to waver in a design 1 had formed of waiting on 
the Black Mesmerist, and to incline towards the expediency of 
remaining where I was. Indeed a point of gallantry was in- 
volved in my doing so, inasmuch as I had not left France alone, 
but had come from the prisons of St. Pelagie Avith my distin- 
guished and unfortunate friend Madame Roland (in two volumes 
which 1 bought for two frances each, at the book- stall in the 
Place de la Concorde, Paris, at the corner of the Rue Royale). 
Deciding to pass the evening tete-^-tete with Madame Roland, 
I derived, as I always do, great pleasure from that spiritual 
woman’s society, and the charms of her brave soul and engaging 
conversation. I must confess that if she had only some more 
faults, only a few more passionate failings of any kind, I might 
love her better ; but I am content to believe that the deficiency 


3^4 


our OF THE SEAS OH. 


is in me, and not in her. We spent some sadly interesting hourst 
together on this occasion, and she told me again of her cruel 
discharge from the Abbaye, and of her being re-arrested before 
her free feet had sprung lightly up half-a-dozen steps of her own 
staircase, and carried oft' to the prison which she only left for 
the guillotine. 

Madame Roland and I took leave of one another before mid- 
night, and I went to bed full of vast intentions for the next day 
in connexion with the unparalleled chapter. To hear the for- 
eign mail-steamers coming in at dawn of day, and to know that 
I was not on board or obliged to get up, was very comfortable ; 
so, I rose for the chapter in great force. 

I had advanced so far as to sit down at my window again on 
my second morning, and to write the first half-line of the chap- 
ter and strike it out, not liking it, when my conscience re- 
proached me with not having surveyed the watering-places out 
of the season, after all, yesterday, but with having gone straight 
out of it at the rate of four miles and a half an hour. Obviously 
the best amends that I could make for this remissness w^s to go 
and look at it without another moment’s delay. So — alto- 
gether as a matter of duty — I gave up the magnificent chapter 
for another day, and sauntered out with my hands in my pock- 
ets. 

All the houses and lodgings ever let to visitors, were to let 
that morning. It seemed to have snowed bills with To Let 
upon them. This put me upon thinking what the owners of all 
those apartments did, out of the season ; how they employed 
their time, and occupied their minds. They could not be 
always going to the Methodist chapels, of which I passed one 
every other minute. They must have some other recreation. 
Whether they pretended to take one another’s lodgings, and 
opened one another’s tea-caddies in fun ? Whether they cut 
slices off their own beef and mutton, and made believe that it 
belonged to somebody else ? Whether they played little dramas 
of life, as children do, and said, “ I ought to come and look at 
your apartments, and you ought to ask two guineas a-week too 
much, and then I ought to say I must have the rest of the day 
to think of it, and then you ought to say that another lady and 
gentleman with no children in family had made an offer very 
close to your own terms, and you had passed your word to give 
them a positive answer in half-an-hour, and indeed were just 
going to take the bill down when you heard the knock, and then 
I ought to take them you know ?” Twenty such speculations 
engaged my thoughts. Then, after passing, still clinging to the 


OUT OF THE SEAS OH. 


365 


walls, defaced rags of the bills of last year’s Circus, I came to a 
back field near a timber yard where the Circus itself had been, 
and where there was yet a sort of monkish tonsure on the grass, 
indicating the spot where the young lady had gone round upon 
her pet steed Firefly in her daring flight. Turning into the 
town again, I came among the shops, and they were emphati- 
cally out of the season. The chemist had no boxes of ginger- 
beer powders, no beautifying sea-side soaps and washes, no at- 
tractive scents ; nothing but his great goggle-eyed red bottles, 
looking as if the winds of winter and the drift of the salt-sea had 
inflamed them. The grocers’ hot pickles, Harvey’s Sauce, 
Doctor Kitchener’s Zest, Anchovy Paste, Dundee Marmalade, 
and the whole stock of luxurious helps to aj^petite, were hyber- 
nating somewhere under-ground. The china-shop had no trifles 
from anywhere. The Bazaar had given in altogether, and pre- 
sented a notice on the shutters that this establishment would re- 
open at Whitsuntide, and that the ^troprietor in the meantime 
might be heard of at Wild Lodge, East Cliff. At the Sea-bath- 
ing Establishment, a row of neat little wooden houses seven or 
eight feet high, I saw the proprietor in bed in the shower-bath. 
As to the bathing-machines, they were (how they got there, is 
not for me to say) at the top of a hill at least a mile and a half 
off. The library, which I had never seen otherwise than wide 
open, was tight shut; and two peevish bald old, gentlemen 
seemed to be hermetically sealed up inside, eternally reading 
the paper. That wonderful mystery, the music-shop, carried it 
off as usual (except that it had more cabinet pianos in stock), 
as if season or no season were all one to it. It made the same 
prodigious display of bright brazen wind-instruments, horribly 
twisted, worth, as I should conceive, some thousands of pounds, 
and which it is utterly impossible that anybody in any season 
can ever play or want to play. It had five triangles in the win- 
dow, six pairs of castanets, and three harps ; likewise every 
])olka with a colored frontispiece that ever was published ; from 
the original one where a smooth male and female Pole of high 
rank are coming at the observer with their arms a-kimbo, to the 
Ratcatcher’s Daughter. Astonishing establishment, amazing 
enigma ! Three other shops were pretty much out of the sea- 
son, what they were used to be in it. First, the shop where 
they sell the sailors’ watches, which had still the old collection 
of enormous timekeepers, apparently designed to break a fall 
from the masthead : with places to wind them up, like fire-plugs. 
Secondly, the shop where they sell the sailors’ clothing, which 
displayed the old sou’-westers, and the old oily suits, and the 


366 


OUT OF THE SEASON. 


old pea-jackets, and the old one sea-chest, with its handles like I 
a pair of rope earrings. Thirdly, the unchangeable shop for i 
the sale of literature that has been left behind. Here, Dr. 
Faiistus was still going down to very red and yellow perdition, 
under the superintendence of three green personages of a scaly t|| 
humour, with excrescential serpents growing out of their blade- 1 
bones. Here, the Golden Dreamer, and the Norwood Fortune f 
Teller, were still on sale at sixpence each, with instructions fori 
making the dumb cake, and reading destinies in tea-cups, and 
with a picture of a young woman with a high waist lying on a 
sofa in an attitude so uncomfortable as almost to account for 
her dreaming at one and the same time of a conflagration, a ' 
shipwreck, an earthquake, a skeleton, a church-porch, lightning, 
funerals performed, and a young man in a bright blue coat and 
canary pantaloons. Here, were Little Warblers and Fairburn’s 
Comic Songsters. Here, too, were ballads on the old ballad 
paper and in the old confusion of types ; with an old man in a 
cocked hat, and an arm-chair, for the illustration to Will Watch 
the bold Smuggler ; and the Friar of Orders Grey, represented 
by a little girl in a hoop) with a ship in the distance. All these 
as of yore, when they were infinite delights to me ! 

It took me so long fully to relish these many enjoyments, that 
I had not more than an hour before bedtime to devote to 
Madame Roland. We got on admirably together on the subject 
of her convent education, and I rose next morning with the full 
conviction that the day for the great chapter was at last arrived. 

It had fallen calm, however, in the night, and as I sat at 
breakfast I blushed to remember that I had not yet been on 
the Downs. I a walker, and not yet on the Downs ! Really, 
on so quiet and bright a morning this must be set right. As 
an essential part of the Whole Duty of Man, therefore, I left the 
chapter to itself — for the present — and went on the Downs. 
They were wonderfully green and beautiful, and gave me a good 
deal to do. When I had done with the free air and view, 1 had 
to go down into the valley and look after the hops (which I 
know nothing about), and to be equally solicitous as to the 
cherry orchards. Then I took it on myself to cross-examine a 
tramping family in black (mother alleged, I have no doubt by 
herself in person, to have died last week), and to accompany 
eighteenpence which produced a great effect, with moral ad- 
monitions which produced none at all. Finally, it was late in 
the afternoon before I got back to the unprecedented chapter, 
and then I determined that it was out of the season, as the 
l^lace was, and put it away. 


A POOR^MAN^S TALE OF A PATENT. 367 

I went at night to the benefit of Mrs. B. Wedgington at the 
Theatre, Who had placarded the town with the admonition, 
Don’t forget it ! ” 1 made the house, according to my cal- 

culation, four and ninepence to begin with, and it may have 
warmed up, in the course of the evening, to half a sovereign. 
There was nothing to offend any one, — the good Mr. Baines of 
Leeds excepted. Mrs. B. Wedgington sang to a grand piano. 
Mr. B. Wedgington did the like, and also took off his coat, 
tucked up his trousers, and danced in clogs. Master B. Wed- 
gington, aged ten months, was nursed by a shivering young 
])erson in the boxes, and the eye of Mrs. B. Wedgington wan- 
dered that way more than once. Peace be with all the Wedg- 
ingtons from A. to Z. May they find themselves in the Season 
somewhere ! 


A POOR MAN’S TALE OF A PATENT. 

AM not used to writing for print. What working-man 
that never labours less (some Mondays, and Christ- 
mas Time and Easter Time excepted) than twelve or 
fourteen hour a day, is ? But I have been asked to 
])ut down, plain, what I have got to say ; and so I take pen- 
and-ink, and do it to the best of my power, hoping defects will 
find excuse. 

I was born, nigh London, but have worked in a shop at 
Birmingham (what you would call Manufactories, we call Shops), 
almost ever since I was out of my time. 1 served my appren- 
ticeship at Deptford, nigh where I was born, and I am a smith 
by trade. My name is John. I have been called “ Old John ” 
ever since 1 was nineteen year of age, on account of not hav- 
ing much hair. 1 am fifty-six year of age at the present time, 
and 1 don’t find myself with more hair, nor yet with less, to 
signify, than at nineteen year of age aforesaid. 

I have been married five-and-thirty year, come next April. I 
was married on All Fools’ Day. Let them laugh that win. I 
won a good wife that day, and it was as sensible a day to me, 
as ever 1 had. 

We have had a matter of ten children, six whereof are living. 
My eldest son is engineer in the Italian steam-packet “ Mezzo 
(jiorno, ])lying between Marseilles and Naples, and calling at 
Genoa, Leghorn, and Civita Vecchia.” He was a good work- 




368 ^ POOR MAN^S TALE OF A PATENT. 


man. He invented a many useful little things that brought him 
in — nothing. I have two sons doing well at Sydney, New South 
Wales — single, when last heard from. One of my sons (James) 
went wild and for a soldier, where he w^as shot in India, living 
six weeks in hospital with a musket-ball lodged in his shoulder- 
blade, which he wrote with his own hand. He was the best 
looking. One of my two daughters (Mary) is comfortable in 
her circumstances, but water on the chest. The other (Char- 
lotte), her husband run away from her in the basest manner, and 
she and her three children live with us. The youngest, six 
year old, has a turn for mechanics. 

I am not a Chartist, and I never was. I don’t mean to say 
but what I see a good many public points to complain of, still 
I don’t think that’s the way to set them right. If I did think 
so, I should be a Chartist. But I don’t think so, and I am not 
a Chartist. I read the paper, and hear discussion, at what we 
call “ a parlour” in Birmingham, and I know many good men 
and workmen who are Chartists. Note. Not physical force. 

It won’t be took as boastful in me, if I make the remark (for 
I can’t put down what I have got to say, without putting that 
down before going any further), that I have always been of an 
ingenious turn. I once got twenty pound by a screw, and 
it’s in use now. I have been twenty year, off and on, complet- 
ing an Invention and perfecting it. I perfected of it, last 
Christinas Eve at ten o’clock at night. Me and my wife stood 
and let some tears fall over the Model, when it was done and I 
brought her in to take a look at it. 

A friend of mine, by the name of William Butcher, is a 
Chartist. Moderate. He is a good speaker. He is very ani- 
mated. I have often heard him deliver that what is, at every 
turn, in the way of us working men, is, that too many places 
have been made, in the course of time, to provide for people 
that never ought to have been provided for ; and that we have 
to obey forms and to pay fees to support those places when we 
shouldn’t ought. “True” (delivers William Butcher), “all the 
public has to do this, but it falls heaviest on the working-man, 
because he has least to spare ; and likewise because impedi- 
ments shouldn’t be put in his way, when he wants redress of 
wrong, or furtherance of right.” Note. I have*wrote down 
those words from William Butcher’s own mouth. W. B. deliv- 
ering them fresh for the aforesaid purpose. 

Now, to my Model again. There it was, perfected of, on 
Christinas Eve, gone nigh a year, at ten o’clock at night. All 
the money I could spare I had laid out upon the Model ; and 



A I’ooR Man’s Tale of a Patent. — [Page 368.] 









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A POOR MAN'S TALE OF A PATENT. 


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when times was bad, or my daughter Charlotte’s children 
sickly, or both, it had stood still, months at a si^ell. I liad 
pulled it to pieces, and made it over again with improvements, 
I don’t know how often. There it stood, at last, a |)erfected 
Model as aforesaid. 

William Rutcher and me had a long talk, Christmas Day, re- 
specting of the Model. William is very sensible. But some- 
times cranky. William said, “ What will you do with it, 
John?” 1 said, “ Patent it.” Willaim said, “ How will you 
Patent it, John ?” 1 said, “By taking out a Patent.” William 

then delivered that the law of Patent vvas a cruel wrong. William 
said, “John, if you make your invention public, before you get 
a Patent, anyone may rob you of the fruits of your hard work. 
You are put in a cleft stick, John. Either you must drive a 
baigain very much against yourself, by getting a party to come 
forward beforehand with the great expenses of the Patent ; or, 
you must be put about, from post to pillar, among so many 
parties, trying to make a better bargain for yourself, and show- 
ing )'Our invention, that your invention will be took from you 
over your head.” I said, “ William Butcher, are you cranky ? 
You are sometimes cranky.” William said, “ No, John, 1 tell 
you the truth ; ” which he then delivered more at length. I 
said to W. B. I would Patent the invention myself. 

My wife’s brother, George Bury of West Bromwich (his 
wife unfortunately took to drinking, made away with everything, 
and seventeen times committed to Ihrmingham Jail before 
happy release, in every point of view), left my wife, his sister, 
when he died, a legacy of one hundred and twenty-eight pound 
ten. Bank of England Stocks. Me and my wife had never broke 
into that money yet. Note. We might come to be old, and 
past our work. We now agreed to Patent the invention. We 
said we would make a hole in it — I mean in the aforesaid 
money — and Patent the invention. William Butcher wrote me 
a letter to Thomas Joy, in London. T. J. is a carpenter, six 
foot four in height, and plays quoits well. He lives in Chel- 
sea, London, by the church. I got leave from the shop, to be 
took on again when I come back. I am a good workman. 
Not a Teetotaller ; but never drunk. When the Christmas 
holidays were over, I went up to London by the Parliamentary 
Train, and hired a lodging for a week with Thomas Joy. He 
is married. He has one son gone to sea. 

Thomas Joy delivered (from a book he had) that the first step 
to be took, in Patenting the invention, was to prepare a petition 
unto Queen Victoria. William Butcher had delivered similar, 
10 * 


370 


A POOR MAN'S TALE OF A PATENT. 


and drawn it np. Note. William is a ready writer... A declara- 
tion before a Master in Chancery was to be added to it. 
Ihat, we likewise drew np. After a deal of trouble I found out 
a Alaster, in Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, nigh 
Temple Bar, where I made the declaration, and paid eighteen- 
pence. I was told to take the declaration and petition to the 
Home Office, in Whitehall, where I left it to be signed by the 
Home Secretary (after 1 had found the office out) and where I 
paid two pound, two, and six[)ence. In six days he signed it, 
and I was told to take it to the Attorney-General’s chambers, 
and leave it there for a rei)ort. 1 did so, and paid four pound, 
four. Note. Nobody all through, ever thankful for their money, 
but all uncivil. 

My lodging at Thomas Joy’s was now hired for another week, 
whereof five days were gone. The Attorney-General made 
what they called a Report-of-course (my invention being, as 
William Butcher had delivered before starting, unopposed), 
and I was sent back with it to the Home Office. They made 
a Copy of it, which was called a warrant. For this warrant, 

I paid seven pound, thirteen, and six. It was sent to the 

Queen, to sign. The Queen sent it back, signed. The Home 
Secretary signed it again. The gentleman throwed it at me 
when I called, and said, “Now take it to the Patent Office in 
Lincoln’s Inn.” I was then in my third week at Thomas Joy’s, 
living very sparing, on account of fees. I found myself losing 
heart. ® 

At the Patent Office in Lincoln’s Inn, they made “ a draft of 
the Queen’s bill,” of my invention, and a “docket of the bill.” 

I paid five pound, ten, and six, for this. They “ engrossed 
two copies of the bill ; one for the Signet Office, and one for 

the Privy-Seal Office.” I paid one pound, seven, and six, for 

this. Stamp duty over and above, three pound. The Engross- 
ing Clerk of the same office engrossed the Queen’s bill for sig- 
nature. I paid him one pound, one. Stamp-duty, again, one 
pound, ten. I was next to take the Queen’s bill to the Attor- 
ney-General again, and get it signed again. I took it. and paid 
five pound more. I fetched it away, and took it to the Home 
Secretary again. He sent it to the Queen again. She signed 
It again. I paid seven pound, thirteen, and six, more, for this. 

I had been over a month at Thomas Joy’s. I was quite wore 
out, patience and pocket. 

Thomas Joy delivered all this, as it Vv^ent on, to William 
Butcher. William Butcher delivered it again to three Birming- 
ham Parlours, from which it got to all the other Parlours, and was 


A POOR AfAN^S TALE OF A PATENT. 


371 


took, as I have been told since, right through all the shoj)s in 
the North of England. Note. William Butcher delivered, at 
his Parlour, in a speech, that it was a Patent way of making 
Chartists. 

But 1 hadn’t nigh done yet. The Queen’s bill was to be took 
to the Signet Office in Somerset House, Strand — where the 
stamp shop is. Tlie Clerk of the Signet made “ a Signet bill 
for the l.ord Keeper of the Privy Seal.” I paid him four pound, 
seven, d’he Clerk of the Lord Keeper of the Privy-Seal made 
“ a Privy-Seal bill for the Lord Chancellor.” I paid him, four 
])Ound, two. The Privy-Seal bill was handed over to the Clerk 
of the Patents, who engrossed the aforesaid. I paid him five 
pound, seventeen, and eight ; at the same time, I paid Stamp- 
duty for the Patent, in one lump, thirty pound. 1 next paid for 
“boxes for the Patent,” nine and sixpence. Note. Thomas 
Joy would have made the same at a profit for eighteen-pence. 
I next paid “ fees to the deputy, the Lord Chancellor’s Purse- 
bearer,” two pound, two. I next paid “ fees to the Clerk of 
the Hanaper,” seven pound, thirteen. I next paid “fees to the 
Deputy Clerk of the Hanaper,” ten shillings. I next paid, to 
the Lord Chancellor again, one ])ound, eleven, and six. Last 
of all, I paid “ fees to the Deputy Sealer, and De])uty Chaff- 
wax,” ten shillings and sixpence. I had lodged at Thomas 
Joy’s over six weeks, and the unopposed Patent for my inven- 
tion, for England only, liad cost me ninety-six pound, seven, 
and eightpence. If I had taken it out for the United Kingdom, 
it would have cost me more than three hundred pound. 

Now, teaching had not come up but very limited when I was 
young. So much the worse for me you’ll say. I say the same. 
\Villiam Butcher is twenty year younger than me. He knows a 
hundred year more. If William Butcher had wanted to Patent 
an invention, he might have been sharper than myself when 
hustled backwards and forwards aiiiong all those offices, though 
1 doubt if so patient. Note. Wiiliam being sometimes cranky, 
and consider })orters, messengers, and clerks. 

Thereby I .say. nothing of uiy being tired of my life, while I 
was Patenting my invention. But 1 i)ut this: Is it reasonable 
to make a man feel as if, in inventing an ingenious imjuove- 
ment meant to do good, he had done something wrong ? How 
else can a man feel, when he is met by such difficulties at every 
turn ? All inventors taking out a Patent must feel so. And 
look at the expense. How hard on me, and how hard on the 
country if there’s any merit in me (and my invention is took up 
now, 1 am thankful to say, and doing well) to put me to all that 


372 


THE NOBLE SAVAGE. 


expense before I can move a finger ! Make the addition your- 
self, and it’ll come to ninety-six pound, seven, and eiglitpence. 
No more, and no less. 

\V' hat can I say against William Rutcher, about places ? 
Look at the Home Secretary, the Attorney-General, the Patent 
Office, the Engrossing Clerk, the I.ord Chancellor, the Privy 
Seal, the Clerk of the Patents, the Lord Chancellor’s Purse- 
bearer, the Clerk of the Hanaper, the Deputy Cleik of the 
Hanaper, the Deputy Sealer, and the Deputy Chaff-wax. No 
man in England could get a Patent for an India-rubber band, 
or an iron hoop, without feeing all of them. Some of them, 
over and over again. I went through thirty-five stages. I 
began with the Queen upon the Throne. I ended with the 
Deputy Chaff-wax. Note* I should like to see the Deputy 
Chaff- wax. Is it a man, or what is it ? 

What I had to tell, I have told. I have wrote it down. I 
hope it’s plain. Not so much in the handwriting (though 
nothing to boast of there), as in the sense of it. I will now 
conclude with Thomas Joy. Thomas said to me, when we 
parted, “ John, if the laws of this country were as honest as 
they ought to be, you would have come to London — registered 
an exact description and drawing of your invention — j)aid half- 
a crown or so for doing of it — and therein and thereby have got 
your Patent.” 

My opinion is the same as Thomas Joy. Further. In Wil- 
liam Butcher’s delivering “ that the whole gang of Hanapers and 
Chaff waxes must be done away with, and that England has 
been chaffed and waxed sufficient,” I agree. 


THE NOBLE SAVAGE. 

O come to the point at once, I beg to say that I have not 
the least belief in the Noble Savage. I consider him a 
prodigious nuisance, and an enormous superstition. His 
calling rum fire-water, and me a pale face, wholly fail to 
reconcile me to him. I don’t care what he calls me. I call him a 
savage, and I call a savage a something highly desirable to be civ- 
ilised off the face of the earth. I think a mere gent (which I take 
to be the lowest form of civilisation) better than a howling, whist- 
ling, clucking, stamping, jumping, tearing savage. It is all one to 
me, whether he sticks a fish-bone through his visage, or bits of 



THE NOBLE SAVAGE. 


373 


trees through the lobes of his ears, or birds’ feathers in his head ; 
whether he flattens his hair between two boards, or spreads his 
nose over the breadth of his face, or drags his lower lip down 
by great weights, or blackens his teeth, or knocks them out, or 
paints one cheek red and the other blue, or tattoos himself, or 
oils himself, or rubs his body with fat, or crimps it with knives. 
Yielding to whichsoever of these agreeable eccentricities, he is 
a savage — cruel, false, thievish, murderous ; addicted more or 
less to grease, entrails, and beastly customs ; a wild animal with 
the questionable gift of boasting ; a conceited, tiresome, blood- 
thirsty, monotonous humbug. 

Yet it is extraordinary to observe how some people will talk 
about him, as they talk about the good old times ; how they will 
regret his disappearance, in the course of this world’s develop- 
ment, from such and such lands where his absence is a blessed 
relief and an indispensable preparation for the sowing of the 
very flrst seeds of any influence that can exalt humanity ; how, 
even with the evidence of himself before them, they will either 
be determined to believe, or will suffer themselves to be per- 
suaded into believing, that he is something which their five 
senses tell them he is not. 

There was Mr. Catlin, some few years ago, with his Ojibbe- 
way Indians. Mr. Catlin was an energetic, earnest man, who 
had lived among more tribes of Indians than I need reckon up 
here, and who had written a picturesque and glowing book 
about them. With his party of Indians squatting and spitting 
on the table before him, or dancing their miserable jigs after 
their own dreary manner, he called, in all good faith, upon his 
civilised audience to take notice of their symmetry and grace, 
their perfect limbs, and the exquisite expression of their panto- 
mime ; and his civilised audience, in all good faith, complied 
and admired. Whereas, as mere animals, they were wretched 
creatures, very low in the scale and very poorly formed ; and 
as men and women possessing any power of truthful dramatic 
expression by means of action, they were no better than the 
chorus at an Italian Opera in England — and would have been 
worse if such a thing were ])ossible. 

Mine are no new views of the noble savage. The greatest 
writers on natural history found him out long ago. Buffon 
knew what he was, and showed wdiy he is the sulky tyrant that he 
is to his women, and hovvit happens (Heaven be praised !) that 
his race is spare in numbers. For evidence of the quality of his 
moral nature, pass himself for a moment and refer to his “faith- 
ful dog.” Has he ever improved a dog, or attached a dog, 


374 


THE' NOBLE SAVAGE, 


since his nobility first ran wild in woods, and was brought 
down (at a very long shot) by Pope ? Or does the animal 
that is the friend of man, always degenerate in his loVv so- 
ciety ? 

It is not the miserable nature of the noble savage that is the 
new thing; it is the whimpering over him with maudlin admir- 
ation, and the affecting to regret him, and the drawing of any 
comparison of advantage between the blemishes of civilisation 
and the tenor of his swinish life. There may have been a 
change now and then in those diseased absurdities, but there is 
none in him. 

Think of the Bushmen. Think of the two men and the two 
women who have been exhibited about England for some years. 
Are the majority of persons — who remember the horrid little 
leader of that party in his festering bundle of hides, with his 
filth and his antipathy to water, and his straddled legs, and his 
odious eyes shaded by his brutal hand, and his cry of “ Qu-u u-u- 
aaa ! ” (Bosjesman for something desperately insulting I have 
no doubt) — conscious of an affectionate yearning towards that 
noble savage, or is it idiosyncratic in me to abhor, detest, abomin- 
ate, and abjure him ? I have no reserve on this subject, and v/ill 
frankly state that, setting aside that stage of the entertainment 
when he counterfeited the death of some creature he had shot, 
by laying his head on his hand and shaking his left leg — at 
which time I think it would have been justifiable homicide to 
slay him — 1 have never seen that groiiji sleei)ing, smoking, and 
expectorating round their brazier, but I have sincerely desired 
that something might happen to the charcoal smouldering 
therein, which would cause the immediate suffocation of the 
whole of the noble strangers. 

There is at present a party of Zulu Kaffirs exhibiting at the 
St. George’s Gallery, Hyde Park Corner, London. These 
noble savages are represented in a most agreeable manner ; 
they are seen in an elegant theatre, fitted with appropriate scen- 
ery of great beauty, and they are described in a very sensible' 
and unpretending lecture, delivered with a modesty which is 
quite a pattern to all similar exponents. Though extremely 
ugly, they are much better shaped than such of their predeces- 
sors as I have referred to ; and they are rather picturesque to 
the eye, though far from odoriferous to the nose. What a vis- 
itor left to his own interpretings and imaginings might suppose 
these noblemen to be about, when they give vent to that pan- 
tomimic expression which is quite settled to be the natural gift 
of the noble savage, I cannot possibly conceive ; for it is"^GO 


THE NOBLE SAVAGE. 


375 


much too luminous for my personal civilisation that it conveys 
no idea to my mind beyond a general stamping, ram|>ing, and, 
raying, remarkable (as everything in savage life is) for its dire 
uniformity. But let us — with the interpreter’s assistance, of 
which I for one stand so much in need — see what the noble 
savage does in Zulu Kaffirland. 

d'he noble savage sets a king to leign over him, to whom he 
submits his life and limbs without a murmur or question, and 
whose whole life is passed chin deep in a lake of blood ; but 
who, after killing incessantly, is in his turn killed by his relations 
and friends, the moment a gray hair appears on his head. All 
the noble savage’s wars with his fellow-savages (and he takes no 
pleasure in anything else) are wars of extermination — which is 
the best thing I know of him, and the most comfortable to my 
mind when I look at him. He has no moral feelings of any 
kind, sort, or description; and his “mission” may be summed 
up as simply diabolical. 

The ceremonies with which he faintly diversifie's his life are, 
of course, of a kindred nature. If he wants a wife he appears 
before the kennel of the gentleman whom he has selected for his 
father-in-law, attended by a party of male friends of a very 
strong flavour, who screech and whistle and stamp an offer of 
so many cows for the young lady’s hand. The chosen father- 
in-law — also supported by a high-flavoured party of male friends 
— screeches, whistles, and yells (being seated on the ground, he 
can’t stamp) that there never was such a daughter in the 
market as his daughter, and that he must have six more cows. 
The son-in-law and his select circle of backers, sci'eech, whistle, 
stamp, and yell in reply, that they will give three more cows. 
The father-in-law (an old deluder, overpaid at the beginning) 
accepts four, and rises to bind the bargain. The whole I'arty, 
the young lady included, then falling into epileptic convulsions, 
and screeching, whistling, stamping, and yelling together — and 
nobody taking any notice of the young lady (whose charms 
are not to be thought of without a shudder) — the noble savage 
is considered married, and his friends make demoniacal leaps 
at him by way of congratulation. 

When the noble savage finds himself a little unwell, and men- 
tions the circumstance to his friends, it is immediately perceived 
that he is under the influence of witchcraft. A learned person- 
age, called an Imyanger or Witch Doctor, is immediately sent 
for to Nooker the Umtargartie, or smell out the witch. The 
male inhabitants of the Kraal being seated on the ground, the 
learned doctor^ got up like a grizzly bear, appears, and admin- 


376 


THE NOBLE SAVAGE. 


isters a dance of a most terrific nature, during the exhibition of 
which remedy he incessantly gnashes his teeth, and howls : — “I 
am the original physician to Nooker the Umtargartie. Yow 
yow yowl No connexion with any other establishment. Till 
till till ! All other Umtargarties are feigned Umtargarties, 
Boroo Boroo ! but I perceive here a genuine and real Umtar- 
gartie, Hoosh Hoosh Hoosh ! in whose blood I, the original 
Imyanger and Nookerer, Blizzerum Boo ! will wash these bear’s 
claws of mine. O yow yow yow ! ” All this time the learned 
l)hysician is looking out among the attentive faces for some un- 
fortunate man who owes him a cow, or who has given him any 
small offence, or against whom, without offence, he has con- 
ceived a spite. Him he never fails to Nooker as the Umtar- 
gartie, and he is instantly killed. In the absence of such an in- 
dividual, the usual practice is to Nooker the quietest and most 
gentlemanly person in company. But the nookering is invari- 
ably followed on the spot by the butchering. 

Some of the noble savages in whom Mr. Gatlin was so 
strongly interested, and the diminution of whose numbers, by 
rum and small-pox, greatly affected him, had a custom not un- 
like this, though much more appalling and disgusting in its odi- 
ous details. 

The women being at work in the fields, hoeing the Indian 
corn, and the noble savage being asleep in the shade, the chief 
has sometimes the condescension to come forth, and lighten the 
labour by looking at it. On these occasions, he seats himself 
in his own savage chair, and is attended by his shield-bearer : 
who holds over his head a shield of cow-hide — in shape like an 
immense mussel shell — fearfully and wonderfully, after the man- 
ner of a theatrical supernumerary. But lest the great man 
should forget his greatness in the contemplation of the humble 
works of agriculture, there suddenly rushes in a poet, retained 
for the purpose, called a Praiser. This literary gentleman 
wears a leopard’s head over his own, and a dress of tiger’s tails ; 
he has the appearance of having come express on his hind legs 
from the Zoological Gardens; and he incontinently strikes up 
the chiefs praises, plunging and tearing all the while. There 
is a frantic wickedness in this brute’s manner of worrying the 
air, and gnashing out, “ Oh what a delightful chief he is ! O 
what a delicious quantity of blood he sheds! O how majesti- 
ally he laps it up I O how charmingly cruel he is I O how he 
tears the flesh of his enemies and crunches the bones ! O how 
like the tiger and the leopard and the wolf and the bear he is I 
O, row row row row, how fond I am of him I ” — which might 


THE NOBLE SAVAGE. 


377 

tempt the Society of Priends to charge at a hand-gallop into the 
Swartz-Kop location and exterminate the whole kraal. 

When war is afoot among the noble savages — which is always 
— the chief holds a council to ascertain whether it is the opinion 
of his brothers and friends in general that the enemy shall be 
exterminated. On this occasion, after the performance of an 
Umsebeuza, or war song, — which is exactly like all the other 
songs, — the chief makes a speech to his brothers and friends, 
arranged in single file. No particular order is observed during 
the delivery of this address, but every gentleman who finds 
himself excited by the subject, instead of crying “ Hear, hear !” 
as is the custom with us, darts fi'om the rank and tramples out 
the life, or crushes the skull, or mashes the face, or scoops out 
the eyes, or breaks the limbs, or performs a whirlwind of atroc- 
ities on the body of an imaginary enemy. Several gentlemen 
becoming thus excited at once, and i)ounding away without the 
least regard to the orator, that illustrious person is rather in the 
])Osition of an orator in an Irish House of Commons. But, 
several of these scenes of savage life bear a strong generic 
resemblance to an Irish election, and I think would be ex- 
tremely well received and understood at Cork. 

In all these ceremonies the noble savage holds forth to the 
utmost possible extent about himself ; from which (to turn him 
to some civilised account) we may learn, I think, that as ego- 
tism is one of the most offensive and contemptible littlenesses 
•a civilised man can exhibit, so it is really incompatible with the 
interchange of ideas; inasmuch as if we all talked about our- 
selves we should soon have no listeners, and must be all yelling 
and screeching at once on our own separate accounts : making 
society hideous. It is my opinion that if we retained in us any- 
thing of the noble savage, we could not get rid of it too soon. 
But the fact is clearly otherwise. Upon the wife and dowry 
question, substituting coin for cows, we have assuredly nothing 
of the Zulu Kiffir left. The endurance of despotism is one 
great distinguishing mark of a savage always. The improving 
world has quite got the better of that too. In like manner, 
Paris is a civilised city and the Theatre Frangais a highly civ- 
ilised theatre ; and we shall never hear, and never have heard 
in these later days (of course) of the Praiser there. No, no, 
civilised poets have better work to do. As to Nookering 
Umtargarties, there are no i)retended Umtargarties in Euro})e, 
and no European powers to Nooker them ; that would be 
mere *spydom, subornation, small malice, superstition, and 
false pretence. And as to private Umtargarties, are we not 


A FLIGHT. 


3/8 

in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-three, with spirits rap- 
ping at our doors ? 

To conclude as I began. My position is, that if we have 
anything to learn from the Noble Savage, it is what to avoid. 
His virtues are a fable ; his happiness is a delusion ; his nobil- 
ity, nonsense. We have no greater justification for being cruel 
to the miserable object, than for being cruel to a William 
Shakspeare or an Isaac Newton ; but he passes awaybefore 
an immeasurably better and higher power than ever ran wild in 
any earthly woods, and the world will be all the better when his 
place knows him no more. 


A FLIGHT. 

HEN Don Diego de— I forget his name — the inventor 
of the last new Flying Machines, price so many francs 
for ladies, so many more for gentleman — when Don 
Diego, by permission of Deputy Chaff Wax and his 
noble band, shall have taken out a Patent for the Queen’s do- 
minions, and shall have opened a commodious Warehouse in 
an airy situation ; and when all persons of any gentility will 
keep at least a pair of wings, and be seen skimming about in 
every direction ; I shall take a flight to Paris (as I soar round 
the world) in a cheap and independent manner. At present, 
my reliance is on the South Eastern Railway Company, in whose 
Express Train here I sit, at eight of the clock on a very hot 
morning, under the very hot roof of the Terminus at London 
Bridge, in danger of being “forced” like a cucumber, or a 
melon, or a pine-apple — And talking of pine-apples, I sujjpose 
there never were so many pine-apples in a Train as there appear 
to be in this Train. 

Whew ! The hot-house air is faint with pine-appies. Every 
French citizen or citizeness is carrying pine-apples home. The 
compact little Enchantress in the corner of my carriage (French 
actress, to whom I yielded up my heart under the auspices cf 
that brave child, “ Meat-chell,” at the St. James’s Theatre 
the night before last) has a pine-apple in her lap. Compact 
Enchantess’s friend, confidante, mother, mystery. Heaven 
knows what, has two pine-apples in her lap, and a bundle of 
them under the seat. Tobacco-smoky Frenchman in Algerine 
wrapper, with peaked hood behind, who might be Abd-el-Kader 



A FLIGHT, 


379 


dyed rifle-green, and who seems to be dressed entirely in dirt 
and braid, carries pine-apples in a covered basket. Tall, grave, 
melancholy Frenchman, with black Vandyke beard, and hair 
close-cropped, with expansive chest to waistcoat, and com- 
pressive waist to coat : saturnine as to his ])antaloons, calm as 
to his feminine boots, precious as to his jewellery, smooth and 
white as to his linen ; dark-eyed, high-foreheaded, hawk-nosed 
— got up, and thinks, like’ Lucifer or Mephistopheles, or-Zamiel, 
transformed into a highly genteel Parisian — has the green end of 
a pine-apple sticking out of his neat valise. 

Whew ! If I were to be kept here long, under this forcing- 
frame, I wonder what would become of me — whether I should 
be forced into a giant, or should sprout or blow into some other 
phenomenon ! Compact Enchantress is not ruffled by the heat 
— she is always composed, always compact. O look at her lit- 
tle ribbons, frills, and edges, at her shawl, at her gloves, at her 
hair, at her bracelets, at her bonnet, at everything about her ! 
How is it accomplished ? What does she do to be so neat? 
How is it that every trifle she wears belongs to her, and cannot 
choose but be a i)art of her ? And even Mystery, look at her ! 
A model. Mystery is not young, not pretty, though still of an 
average candle-light passability ; but she does such miracles in 
her own behalf, that, one of .these days, when she dies, they’ll 
be amazed to find an old woman in her bed, distantly like her. 
She was an actress once, I shouldn’t wonder, and had a Mystery 
attendant on herself Perhaps, Compact Enchantress will live to 
be a Mystery, and to wait with a shawl at the side-scenes, and to 
sit opi>osite to Mademoiselle in railway carriages, and smile and 
talk subserviently, as Mystery does now. That’s hard to be- 
lieve ! 

Two Englishmen, and now our carriage is full. First English- 
man, in moneyed interest — flushed, highly respectable — Stock 
Exchange, perhaps — City, certainly. Faculties of second En- 
glishman entirely absorbed in hurry. Plunges into the carriage, 
blind. Calls out of the window concerning his luggage, deaf. 
Suffocates himself under pillows of great coats, for no reason, 
and in a demented manner. Will receive no assurance from 
any porter whatsoever. Is stout and hot, and wipes his head, 
and makes himself hotter by breathing so hard. Is totally in- 
credulous respecting assurance of Collected Guard that “ there’s 
no hurry.” No hurry ! And a flight to Paris in eleven hours ! 

It is all one to me in this drowsy corner, hurry or no hurry. 
Until Don Diego shall send home my wings, my flight is with 
the South Eastern Company. I can fly with the South Eastern, 


A FLIGHT. 


3 So 

more lazily, at all events, than in the upper air. I have but to 
sit here thinking as idly as I please, and be whisked away. I 
am not accountable to anybody for the idleness of my thoughts 
in such an idle summer flight ; my flight is provided for by the 
South Eastern and is no business of mine. 

The bell ! With all my heart. It does not require me to do 
so much as even to flap my wings. Something snorts for me, 
something shrieks for me, something proclaims to everything 
else that it had better keep out of my way, — and away I go. 

Ah ! The fresh air is pleasant after the forcing-frame, though 
it does blow over these interminable streets, and scatter the 
smoke of this vast wilderness of chimneys. Here we are — no, 
I mean there we were, for it has darted far into the rear — in 
Bermondsey where the tanners live. Flash ! The distant 
shipping in the Thames is gone. Whirr ! The little streets of 
new brick and red tile, with here and there a flagstaff growing 
like a tall weed out of the scarlet beans, and, everywhere, plenty 
of open sewer and ditch for the promotion of the public health, 
have been fired off in a volley. Whizz ! Dust heaps, market- 
gardens, and waste grounds. Rattle ! New Cross Station. 
Shock ! There we were at Croydon. Bur-r-r-r ! The tunnel. 

I wonder why it is that when I shut my eyes in a tunnel I 
begin to feel as if were going at an Express pace the other way. 

I am clearly going back to London now\ Compact Enchantress 
must have forgotten something, and reversed the engine. No ! 
After long darkness, pale fitful streaks of light appear. I am 
still flying on for Folkestone. The streaks grow stronger — be- 
come continuous — become the ghost of day — become the living 
day — became 1 mean — the tunnel is miles and miles away, 
and here I fly through sunlight, all among the harvest and the 
Kentish hops. 

There is a dreamy pleasure in this flying. I wonder where 
it was, and when it was, that we exploded, blew into space 
somehow, a Parliamentary Train, with a crowd of heads and 
faces looking at us out of cages, and some hats waving. 
Moneyed Interest says it was at Reigate Station. Expounds to 
Mystery how Reigate Station is so many miles from London, . 
which Mystery again develops to Compact Enchantress. There 
might be neither a Reigate nor a London for me as I fly away 
among the Kentish hops and harvest. What do / care ! 

Bang ! We have let another Station off, and fly away re- 
gardless. Everything is flying. The hop-gardens turn grace- 
fully towards me, i)resenting regular avenues of hops in rapid 
flight, then whirl away. So do the pools and rushes, haystacks. 


A FLIGHT, 


3S1 

sneep, clover in fall bloom delicious to the sight and smell, 
corn-sheaves, cherry-orchards, a))plc-orchards, reapers, gleaners, 
hedges, gates, fields that taper off into little angular corners, 
collages, gardens, now and then a church. Bang, bang ! A 
double-barrelled Station ! Now a wood, now a bridge, now a 
landscape, now a cutting, now a — Bang ! a single-barrelled 
Station — there was a cricket match somewhere with two white 
tents, and then four flying cows, then turnips — now the wires of 
the electric telegraph are all alive, and spin, and blur their 
edges, and go up and down, and make the intervals between 
each other most irregular : contracting and expanding in the 
strangest manner. Now we slacken. With a screwing, and a 
grinding, and a smell of water thrown on ashes, now we stop ! 

Demented Traveller, who has been for two or three minutes 
watchful, clutches his great coats, plunges at the door, rattles 
it, cries “Hi!” eager to embark on board of impossible 
packets, far inland. Collected Guard appears. “Are you for 
Tunbridge, sir?” “Tunbridge? No. Paris.” “Plenty of 
time, sir. No hurry. Five minutes here, sir, for refreshment.” 
I am so blest (anticipating Zamiel, by half a secoml) as to \)ro- 
cure a glass of water for Comj)act Enchantress. 

Who would suppose we had been flying at such a rate, and_ 
shall take wing again directly ? Refreshment-room full, plat- 
form full, porter with watering-pot deliberately cooling a hot 
wheel, another porter with equal deliberation helping the rest of 
the wheels bountifully to ice cream. Moneyed Interest and 1 re- 
entering the carriage first, and being there alone, he intimates 
to me that the French are “ no go ” as a Nation. 1 ask why ? 
He says, that Reign of Terror of theirs was quite enough. I 
ventured to inquire whether he remembers anything that pre- 
ceded said Reign of Terror? He says not particularly. 
“Because,” I remark, “the harvest that is reaped, has some- 
times been sown.” Moneyed Interest repeats, as quite enough 
for him, that the French are revolutionary, “ — and always at 
it.” 

Bell. Compact Enchantress, helped in by Zamiel, (whom 
the stars confound !) gives us her charming little side-box look, 
and smites me to the core. Mystery eating sponge cake. 
Pine-apple atmosphere faintly tinged with suspicions of sherry. 
Demented Traveller flits past the carriage, looking for it. Is 
blind with agitation, and can’t see it. Seems singled out by 
Destiny to be the only unhappy creature in the flight, who has 
any cause to hurry himself. Is nearly left behind. Is seized 
by Collected Guard after the Train is in motion, and bundled in. 


382 


A FLIGHT. 


Still has lingering suspicions that there must be a boat in the 
neighbourhood, and will look wildly out of window for it. 

Flight resumed. Corn-sheaves, hop-gardens, reapers, glean- 
ers, apple-orchards, cherry-orchards. Stations single and double 
barrelled, x'lshford. Compact Enchantress (constantly talking 
to Mystery, in an exquisite manner) gives a little scream ; a 
sound that seems to come from high in her precious little head ; 
from behind her bright little eyebrows. “ Great Heaven, my 
pine-ai)ple ! My Angel ! It is lost!” M3^stery is desolated. 
A search made. It is not lost. Zamiel finds it. I curse him 
(dying) in the Persian manner. May his face be turned upside 
down, and jackasses sit on his uncle’s grave ! 

Now fresher air, now glimpses of unenclosed Down-land with 
flapping crows flying over it whom we soon outfly, now the Sea, 
now Folkestone at a quarter after ten. “ Tickets ready, gentle- 
men ! ” Demented dashes at the door. “ For Paris, sir ? No 
hurry.” 

Not the least. We are dropped slowly down to the Port, 
and sidle to and fro (the whole Train) before the insensible 
Royal George Hotel, for some ten minutes. The Royal George 
takes no more heed of us than its namesake under water -at 
Spithead, or under earth at Windsor, does. The Royal George’s 
dog lies winking and blinking at us, without taking the trouble 
to sit up; and the Royal George’s “wedding parly” at the 
open window (who seem, I must say, rather tired of bliss) don’t 
bestow a solitary glance ui)on us, flying thus to Paris in eleven 
hours. The first gentleman in Folkestone is evidently used uj), 
on this subject. 

Meanwhile, Demented chafes. Conceives that every man’s 
hand is against him, and exerting itself to prevent his getting to 
Paris. Refuses consolation. Rattles door. Sees smoke on 
the horizon, and “knows” it’s the boat gone without him. 
Moneyed Interest resentfully explains that //<? is going to Paris 
too. Demented signifies that if Moneyed Interest chooses to 
be left behind, he don’t. 

“ Refreshments in the Waiting Room, ladies and gentlemen. 
No hurry, ladies and gentlemen, for Paris. No hurry what- 
ever ! ” 

Twenty minutes’ pause by Folkestone clock, for looking at 
Enchantress while she eats a sandwich, and at Mystery while she 
eats of everything there that is eatable, from pork-pie, sausage, 
jam, and gooseberries, to lumps of sugar. All this time, there 
is a very waterfall of luggage’, with a spray of dust, tumbling 
slantwise from the pier into the steamboat. All this time, De- 


A FLIGHT. 


383 


mented (who has no business with it) watches ft with starting 
eyes, fiercely requiring to be shown Jiis luggage. When it at 
last concludes the cataract, he rushes hotly to refresh — is shouted 
after, pursued, jostled, brought back, pitched into the departing 
steamer upside down, and caught by mariners disgracefully. 

A lovely harvest day, a cloudless sky, a tranquil sea. The 
piston-rods of the engines so regularly coming up from below, 
to look (as well they may) at the bright weather, and so regu- 
larly almost knocking their iron heads against the cross beam 
of the skylight, and never doing it ! Another Parisian actress 
is on board, attended by another Mystery. Compact Enchant- 
ress greets her sister artist — Oh, the Compact One’s pretty 
teeth! — and Mystery greets Mystery. My Mystery soon 
ceases to be conversationable — is taken poorly, in a word, 
having lunched too miscellaneously — and goes below. The 
remaining Mystery then smiles upon the sister artists (who, I 
am afraid, wouldn’t greatly mind stabbing each other), and is 
upon the whole ravished. 

And now I find that all the French people on board begin to 
grow, and all the English people to shrink. The French are 
nearing home, and shaking oft' a disadvantage, whereas we are 
shaking it on. Zamiel' is the same man, and Abd-el-Kader is 
the same man, but each seems to come into possession of an 
indescribable confidence that departs from us — from Moneyed 
Interest, for instance, and from me. Just what they gain, we 
lose. Certain British “ Gents ” about the steersman, intellectu- 
ally nurtured at home on parody of everything and truth of noth- 
ing, become subdued, and in a manner forlorn ; and when tlie 
steersman tells them (not exultingly) how he has “ been upon 
this station now eight year, and never see the old town of Bul- 
liim yet,” one of them, with an imbecile reliance on a reed, asks 
him what he considers to 'be the best Hotel in Paris.? 

Now, 1 tread upon French ground, and am greeted by the 
three charming words. Liberty, Equality, P'raternity, painted uj) 
(in letters a little too thin for their height) on the Custom-House 
wall — also by the sight oflarge cocked hats, without which demon- 
strative head-gear nothing of a public nature can be done upon 
this soil. All the rabid Hotel population of Boulogne howl 
and shriek outside a distant barrier, frantic to get at us. De- 
mented, by some unlucky means peculiar to himself, is delivered 
over to their fury, and is presently seen struggling in a vvliirl- 
pool of 'Pouters— is somehow understood to be going to Paris 
— is, with infinite noise, rescued by two cocked hats, and 
brought into Custom-House bondage with the rest of us. 


384 


A FLIGHT. 


Here, I resign the active duties of life to an eager being, of 
preternatural sharpness, with a shelving forehead and a shabby 
snuff-colored coat, who (from the wharf) brought me down with 
his eye before the boat came into port. He darts u{)on my 
luggage, on the floor where all the luggage is strewn like a 
wreck at the bottom of the great deep ; gets it proclaimed and 
weighed as the proi:)erty of “ Monsieur, a traveller unknown 
pays certain francs for it, to a certain functionary behind a Pig- 
eon Hole, like a pay-box at a Theatre (the arrangements in 
general are on a wholesale scale, half military and half the- 
atical); and 1 suppose 1 shall find it w'hen 1 come to Paris — 
he says I shall. I know nothing about’ it, except that I pay 
him his small fee, and pocket the ticket he gives me, and sit 
upon a counter, involved in the general distraction. 

Railway station. ‘‘Lunch or dinner, ladies and gentlemen. 
Plenty of time for Paris. Plenty of time ! ” Large hall, long 
counter, long strips of dining-table, bottles of wine, plates of 
meat, roast chickens, little loaves of bread, basins of soup, 
little carafies of brandy, cakes, and fruit. Comfortably restored 
from these resources, 1 begin to fly again. 

I saw Zamiel (before I took wing) presented to Compact En- 
chantress and Sister Artist, by an officer in uniform, with a waist 
like a wasp’s, and pantaloons like two balloons. They all got 
into the next carriage together, accompanied by the two Mys- 
teries. They laughed. 1 am alone in the carriage (for I don’t 
consider Demented anybody) and alone in the world. 

Fields, windmills, low grounds, pollard-trees, windmills, fields, 
fortifications, Abbeville, soldiering and drumming. I wonder 
where England is, and when I was there last — about two 
years ago, 1 should say. Flying in and out among these trenches 
and batteries, skimming the clattering drawbridges, looking 
down into the stagnant ditches, 1 become a prisoner of state, 
escaping. 1 am confined with a comrade in a fortress. Our 
room is in an upper story. We have tried to get up the chim- 
ney, but there is an iron grating across it imbedded in the ma- 
sonry. After months of labour, we have worked the grating 
loose with the poker, and can lift it up. We have also made a 
hook, and twisted our rugs and blankets into ropes. Our plan 
is, to go up the chimney, hook our ropes to the top, descend 
hand over hand upon the roof of the guard-house far below, 
shake the hook loose, watch the opportunity of the sentinel’s 
pacing away, hook again, drop into the ditch, swim across it, 
creep into the shelter of the wood. The time is come — a wild 
and stormy night. We are up the chimney, we are on the 


A FLIGHT. 


385 


guard-house roof, we are swimming in the murky ditch, when 
lo ! “ Qui v’E ? ” a bugle, the alarm, a crash ! What is it ? 
Death ? No, Amiens. 

More fortifications, more soldiering and drumming, more 
basins of soup, more little loaves of bread, more bottles of wine, 
more caraffes of brandy, more time for refreshment. Every- 
thing good, and everything ready. Bright, unsubstantial-look- 
ing scenic sort of station. People waiting. Houses, uniforms, 
beards, mustaches, some sabots, plenty of neat women, and a 
few old-visaged children. Unless it be a delusion born of my 
giddy flight, the grown-up people and the children seem to 
change places in France. In general, the boys and girls are 
little old men and women, and the men and women lively boys 
and girls. 

Bugle, shriek, flight resumed. Moneyed Interest has come 
into my carriage. Says the manner of refreshing is “ not bad,” 
but considers it French. Admits great dexterity and politeness 
in the attendants. Thinks a decimal currency may have some- 
thing to do with their despatch in settling accounts, and don’t 
know but what it’s sensible and convenient. Adds, however, 
as a general protest, that they’re a revolutionary people — and 
always at it. 

Ramparts, canals, cathedral, river, soldiering and drumming, 
open country, river, earthenware manufactures, Creil. Again 
ten minutes. Not even Demented in a hurry. Station, a 
a drawing-room with a verandah : like a planter’s house. Mon- 
eyed Interest considers it a band-box, and not made to last. 
Little round tables in it, at one of which the Sister Artists and 
attendant Mysteries are established with Wasp and Zamiel, as if 
they were going to stay a week. 

Anon, with no more trouble than before, I am flying again, 
and lazily wondering as I fly. What has the South Eastern 
done with all the horrible little villages we used to pass through, 
in the Diligence ? What have they done with all the summer 
dust, with all the winter mud, with all the dreary avenues of 
little trees, with all the ramshackle postyards, with all the beg- 
gars (who used to turn out at night with bits of lighted candle, 
to look in at the coach windows), with all the long-tailed horses 
who were always biting one another, with all the big postillions 
in jack-boots — with all the mouldy cafes that we used to stop 
at, where a long mildewed table-cloth, set forth with jovial bot- 
tles of vinegar and oil, and with a Siamese arrangement of pep- 
per and salt, was never wanting ? Where are the grass-grown 
little towns, the wonderful little market-places all unconscious 
17 


A FLIGHT. 


386 

of markets, the shops that nobody kejit, the streets that nobody 
trod, the churches that nobody went to, the bells that nobody 
rang, the tumble-down old buildings pdastered with many- 
colored bills that nobody read ? Where are the two-and- 
twenty weary hours of long, long day and night journey, sure to 
be either insirpportably hot or insupportably cold ? ’\^niere 
are the pains in my bones, where are the fidgets in my 
legs, where is the P'renchinan with the nightcap who never 
7 vould have the little coupe window down, and who always fell 
upon me when he went to sleep, and always slept all night 
snoring onions ? 

A voice breaks in with “ Paris ! Plere we are ! ” . 

I have overflown myself, perha]3s, but I can’t believe it. I 
feel as if I were enchanted or bewitched. It is barely eight 
o’clock yet — it is nothing like half-past — when I have had my 
luggage examined at that briskest of Custom-Houses attached 
to the station, and am rattling over the pavement in a Hackney 
cabriolet. 

Surely, not the pavement of Paris ? Yes, I think it is, too'. 
I don’t know any other place where there are all these high 
houses, all these haggard-looking wine shops, all these billiard 
tables, all these stocking-makers with flat red or yellow legs of 
wood for signboard, all these fuel shops with stacks of billets 
painted outside, and real billets sawing in the gutter, all these 
dirty corners of streets, all these cabinet pictures over dark 
doorways representing discreet matrons nursing babies. And 
yet this morning — I’ll think of it in a warm-bath. 

Very like a small room that I remember in the Chinese Baths 
upon the Boulevard, certainly ; and, though I see it through the 
^ steam, I think that I might swear to that peculiar hot-linen 
basket, like a large wicker hour-glass. When can it have been 
that I left home ? When was it that I paid “ through to Paris” 
at London Bridge, and discharged myself of all responsibility, 
except the preservation of a voucher ruled into three divisions, 
of which the first was snipped off at Folkestone, the second- 
aboard the boat, and the third taken at my journey’s end ? It 
seems to have been ages ago. Calculation is useless. I will 
go out for a walk. 

The crowds in the streets, the lights in the shops and balco- 
nies, the elegance, variety, and beauty of their decorations, the 
number of the theatres, the brilliant cafes with their windows 
thrown up high and their vivacious groups at little tables on the 
pavement, the light and glitter of the houses turned as it were 
inside out, soon convince me that it is no dream ; that I am in 


THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 


387 


Pari?, howsoever I got here. I stroll down to the sparkling 
Palais Royal, up the Rue de Rivoli, to the Place Vendome. As 
I glance into a print-shop window, Moneyed Interest, iny late 
travelling companion, comes upon me, laughing with the highest 
relish-of disdain. “Here’s a people!” he says, pointing to 
Napoleon in the window and Napoleon on the column. “ Only 
one idea all over Paris ! A monomania ! ” Humph ! I think 
I have seen Napoleon’s match ? There was a statue, when I 
came away, at Hyde Park Corner, and another in the City, 
and a print or two in the shops. 

I walk up to the Barrii^re de I’Etoile, sufficiently dazed by 
my flight to have a pleasant doubt of the reality of everything 
about me ; of the lively crowd, the overhanging trees, the per- 
forming dogs, the hobby-horses, the beautiful perspectives of 
shining lamps : the hundred and one inclosures, where the sing- 
ing is, in gleaming orchestras of azure and gold, and where a 
star-eyed Houri comes round with a box for voluntary offerings. 
So, I pass to my hotel, enchanted ; sup, enchanted ; go to bed, 
enchanted ; pushing back this morning (if it really were this 
morning) into the remoteness of time, blessing the South East- 
ern Company for realising the Arabian Nights in these ])rose 
days, murmuring, as I wing my idle flight into the land of dreams, 
“ No hurry, ladies and gentlemen, going to Paris in eleven 
hours. It is so well done, that there really is no hurry ! ” 


THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 


^^^^E are not by any means devout believers in the Old 
Street Police. To say the truth, we think there 
mMil ^ amount of humbug about those worthies. 
^ Apart from many of them being men of very indiffer- 
ent character, and far too much in the habit of consorting with 
thieves and the like, they never lost a public occasion of job- 
bing and trading in mystery and making the most of themselves. 
Continually iiufted besides by incompetent magistrates, anxious 
to conceal their own deficiencies, and hand-in-glove with the 
])enny-a-liners of that time, they became a sort of superstition. 
Although as a Preventive Police they were utterly ineffective, 
and as a Detective Police were very loose and uncertain in 
their operations, they remain with some people a superstition 
to the present day. 

On .the other hand, the Detective Force organized since the 


338 


THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 


establishment of the existing Police, is so well chosen and 
trained, proceeds so systematically and quietly, does its business 
in such a workman-like manner, and is always so calmly and 
steadily engaged in the service of the public, that the public 
really do not know enough of it, to know a tithe of its useful- 
ness. Impressed with this conviction, and interested in the 
men themselves, we represented to the authorities at Scotland 
Yard, that we should be glad, if there were no official objection, 
to have some talk with the Detectives. A most obliging and 
ready permission being given, a certain evening was appointed 
with a certain Inspector for a social conference between our- 
selves and the Detectives, at the Household Words Office in 
Wellington Street, Strand, London. In consequence of which 
appointment the party “ came off,” which we are about to 
describe. And we beg to repeat that, avoiding such topics as 
it might for obvious reasons be injurious to the public, or dis- 
agreeable to respectable individuals, to touch upon in print, our 
description is as exact as we can make it. 

The reader will have the goodness to imagine the Sanctum 
Sanctorum of Household Words. Anything that best suits the 
reader’s fancy, will best represent that magnificent chamber. 
We merely stipulate for a round table in the middle, with some 
glasses and cigars arranged upon it ; and the editorial sofa 
elegantly hemmed in between that stately piece of furniture 
and the wall. 

It is a sultry evening at dusk. The stones of Wellington 
Street are hot and gritty, and the watermen and hackney- 
coachmen at the Theatre opposite, are much flushed and ag- 
gravated. Carriages are constantly setting down the people 
who have come to Fairy-Land : and there is a mighty shouting 
and bellowing every now and then, deafening us for the moment, 
through the open windows. 

Just at dusk. Inspectors Wield and Stalker are announced ; 
but we do not undertake to warrant the orthography of any of 
the names here mentioned. Inspector Wield presents Inspect- 
or Stalker. Inspector Wield is a middle-aged man of a portly 
presence, with a large, moist, knowing eye, a husky voice, and 
a habit of emphasising his conversation by the aid of a corpu- 
lent fore-finger, which is constantly in juxta-position with his 
eyes or nose. Inspector Stalker is a shrewd, hard-headed 
Scotchman — in appearance not at all unlike a very acute, 
thoroughly-trained schoolmaster, from the Normal Establish- 
ment at Glasgow. Inspector Wield one might have known, 
perhaps, for what he is— Inspector Stalker, never. 


THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 


3S9 


The ceremonies of reception over, Inspectors Wield and 
Stalker observe that they have brought some sergeants with 
them. The sergeants are presented — five in number, Sergeant 
Dornton, Sergeant Witchem, Sergeant Mith, Sergeant Fendall, 
and Sergeant Straw. We have the whole Detective Force from 
Scotland Yard, with one exception. They sit down in a semi- 
circle (the two Inspectors at the two ends) at a little distance from 
the round table, facing the editorial sofa. Every man of them, 
in a glance, immediately takes an inventory of the furniture 
and an accurate sketch of the editorial presence. The Editor 
feels that any gentleman in company could take him up, if need 
should be, without the smallest hesitation, twenty years hence. 

The whole party are in plain clothes. Sergeant Dornton 
about fifty years of age, with a ruddy face and a high sunburnt 
forehead, has the air of one who has been a Sergeant in the 
army — he might have sat to Wilkie for the soldier in the reading 
of the will. He is famous for steadily pursuing the inductive 
process, and, from small beginnings, working on from clue to 
clue until he bags his man. Seigeant VVhtchem, shorter and 
thicker-set, and marked with the small pox, has something of a 
reserved and thoughtful air, as if he were engaged in deep 
arithmetical calculations. He is renowned for his acquaintance 
with the swell mob. Sergeant Mith, a smooth-faced man with 
a fresh bright complexion, and a strange air of simplicity, is a 
dab at housebreakers. Sergeant Fendall, a light-haired, well- 
spoken, polite person, is a prodigious hand at pursuing private 
inquiries of a delicate nature. Straw, a little wiry Sergeant of 
meek demeanor and strong sense, would knock at a door and 
ask a series of questions in any mild character you choose to 
prescribe to him, from a charity-boy upwards, and seem as in- 
nocent as an infant. They are, one and all, respectable-looking 
men ; of perfectly good dei)ortment and unusual intelligence ; 
with nothing lounging or slinking in their manners ; with an air 
of keen observation and quick perception when addressed ; 
and generally presenting in their faces, traces more or less 
marked of habitually leading lives of strong mental excitement, 
d'hey have all good eyes ; and they all can, and they all do, 
look full at whomsoever they speak to. 

We light the cigars, and hand round the glasses (which are 
very temperately used indeed), and the conversation begins by 
a modest amateur reference on the Editorial part to the swell 
mob. Ins|)ector Wield immediately removes his cigar from his 
lips, waves his right hand, and says, “ Regarding the swell mob, 
sir, I can’t do better than call upon Sergeant Witchem. Be- 


THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 


390 

cause the reason why? I’ll tell you. Sergeant Witchem is bet- 
ter acquainted with the swell mob than any officer in London.” 

Our heart leaping up when we beheld this rainbow in the 
sky, we turn to Sergeant Witchem, who very concisely, and in 
well-chosen language, goes into the subject forthwith. Mean- 
time, the whole of his brother officers are closely interested in 
attending to what he says, and observing its effects. Presently 
they begin to strike in, one or two together, when an opt^or- 
tunity offers, and the conversation becomes general. P>ut 
these brother officers only come in to the assistance of each 
other — not to the contradiction — and a more amicable brother- 
hood there could not be. From the swell mob, we diverge to" 
the kindred topics of cracksmen, fences, public-house dancers, 
area-sneaks, designing young people who go out “gonophing,” 
and other “ schools.” It is observable throughout these 
revelations, that Inspector Stalker, the Scotchman, is always 
exact and statistical, and that when any question of figures 
arises, everybody as by one consent pauses, and looks to 
him. 

When we have exhausted the various schools of Art — during 
which discussion the whole body have remained profoundly at- 
tentive, except when some unusual noise at the Theatre over 
the way has induced some gentleman to glance inquiringly 
towards the window in that direction, behind his next neigh- 
bour’s back — we burrow for information on such points as the 
following. Whether there really are any highway robberies in 
I.,ondon, or whether some circumstances not convenient to be 
mentioned by the aggrieved party, usually precede the robberies 
complained of, under that head, which quite change their char- 
acter? Certainly the latter, almost always. Whether in the 
case of robberies in houses, where servants are necessarily ex- 
l)osed to doubt, innocence under suspicion ever becomes so like 
guilt in appearance, that a good officer need be cautious how he 
judges it? Undoubtedly. Nothing is so common or deceptive 
as such appearances at first. Whether in a place of public 
amusement, a thief knows an officer, and an officer knows a 
thief — supposing them, beforehand, strangers to each other — 
because each recognises in the other, under ail disguise, an in- 
attention to what is going on, and a purpose that is not the 
jmrpose of being entertained ? Yes. That’s the way exactly. 
Whether it is reasonable or ridiculous to trust to the alleged 
experiences of thieves as narrated by themselves, in i)risons, or 
penitentiaries, or anywhere ? In general, nothing more absurd. 
Lying is their habit and their trade ; and they would rather lie 


THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 


391 

— even if they hadn’t an interest in it, and didn’t want to make 
themselves agreeable — than tell the truth. 

From these topics, we glide into a review of the most cele- 
brated and horrible of the great crimes that have been com- 
mitted within the last fifteen or twenty years. The men engaged 
in the- discovery of almost all of them, and in the pursuit or 
apprehension of the murderers, are here, down to the very last 
instance. One of our guests gave chase to and boarded the 
emigrant ship, in which the murderers last hanged in London 
was supposed to have embarked. We learn from him that his 
errand was not announced to the passengers, who may have no 
idea of it to this hour. That he went below, with the captain, 
lamp in hand — it being dark, and the whole steerage abed and 
sea-sick — and engaged the Mrs. Manning who was on board, in 
a conversation about her luggage, until she was, with no small 
pains, induced to raise her head, and turn her face towards the 
liglit. Satisfied that she was not the object of his search, he 
c[uietly re-embarked in the Government steamer alongside, and 
steamed home again with the intelligence. 

When we have exhausted these subjects, too, which occupy 
a considerable time in the discussion, two or three leave their 
chairs, whisper Sergeant Witchem, and resume their seats. 
Sergeant Witchem leaning forward a little, and placing a hand 
on each of his legs, then modestly speaks as follows : 

“ My brother-officers wish me to relate a little account of my 
taking Tally-ho Thompson. A man oughtn’t to tell what he 
has done himself ; but still, as nobody was with me, and, conse- 
cpiently, as nobody but myself can tell it, I’ll do it in the best 
way 1 can, if it should meet your approval.” 

\Ve assure Sergeant Witchem that he will oblige us very much, 
and we all comj)ose ourselves to listen with great interest and 
attention. 

“ I'ally-ho Thompson,” says Sergeant Witchem, after merely 
wetting his lips with his brandy-and-water, “ Tally-ho Thompson 
was a famous horse-stealer, coiiper, and magsman. Thompson, 
in conjunction with a pal that occasionally worked with him, 
gammoned a countryman out of a good round sum of money, 
under pretence of getting him a situation — the regular old dodge 
— and was afterwards in the ‘Hue and Cry’ for a horse — a 
horse that he stole, down in Hertfordshire. I had to look after 
Thompson, and 1 applied myself, of course, in the first instance, 
to discovering where he was. Now, Thompson’s wife lived, 
along with a little daughter, at Chelsea. Knowing that Thomp- 
son was somewhere in the country, I watched the house — es- 


392 


THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 


pecially at post-time in the morning — thinking Thompson was 
pretty likely to write to her. Sure enough, one morning the 
postman comes up, and delivers a letter at Mrs. Thompson’s 
door. Little girl opens the door, and takes it in. We’re not 
always sure of postmen, though the people at the post-offices 
are always very obliging. A postman may help us, or he may 
ijot, — ^just as it happens. However, I go across the road, and 
I say to the postman, after he has left the letter, ‘ Good morn- 
ing ! how are you ? ’ ‘ How are yoti'i ’ says he. ‘ You’ve just 

delivered a letter for Mrs. Thompson.’ ‘Yes, I have.’ ‘You 
didn’t happen to remark what the post-mark was, perhaps?’. 
‘No,’ says he, ‘I didn’t.’ ‘Come,’ says I, ‘I’ll be plain with 
you. I’m in a small way of business, and 1 have given Thomp- 
son credit, and I can’t afford to lose what he owes me. I know 
he’s got money, and I know he’s in the country, and if you could 
tell me what the post-mark was, I should be very much obliged 
to you, and you’d do a service to a tradesman in a small way 
of business that can’t afford a loss.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘ I do as- 
sure you that I did not observe what the post-mark was ; all I 
know is, that there was money in the letter — I should say a 
sovereign.’ This was enough for me, because of course I knew 
that Thompson having sent his wife money, it was probable 
she’d write to Thompson, by return of post, to acknowledge the 
receij)t. So I said ‘ Thankee ’ to the postman, and I kept on 
the watch. In the afternoon I saw the little girl come out. Of 
course 1 followed her. She went into a stationer’s shop, and I 
needn’t say to you that I looked in at the window. She bought 
some writing-paper and envelopes, and a pen. I think to my- 
self, ‘1 hat’ll do !’ — watch her home again — and don’t go away, 
you may be sure, knowing that Mrs. Thompson was writing her 
letter to dally-ho, and that the letter would be posted presently. 
In about an hour or so, out came the little girl again, with the 
letter in her hand. I went up, and said something to the child, 
whatever it might have been ; but I couldn’t see the direction 
of the letter, because she held it with the seal upwards. How- 
ever, I observed that on the back of the letter there was what 
we call a kiss a drop of wax by the side of the seal — and again, 
you understand, that was enough for me. I saw her post the 
letter, waited till she was gone, then w’ent into the shop, and 
asked to see the Master. When he came out, I told him, ‘ Now, 
I’m an Officer in the Detective Force ; there’s a letter with a 
kiss been posted here just now, for a man that I’m in search of ; 
and what I have to ask of you, is, that you will let me look at 
the direction of that letter.’ He was very civil — took a lot of 


THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 


393 


letters from the box in the window — shook ’em out on the 
counter with the faces downwards — and there among ’em was 
the identical letter with the kiss. It was directed, ‘ Mr. Thomas 

Pigeon, Post Ofiice, B , to be left till called for.’ Dowm 1 

w'ent to B (a huncUed and t\venty miles or so) that night. 

Early next morning I went to the Post Office ; saw’ the gentle- 
man in charge of that department; told him who I was; and 
that my object was to see, and track, the party that should come 
for the letter for Mr. Thomas Pigeon. He was very polite, and 
said, ‘You shall have every assistance w'e can give you; you 
can wait inside the office ; and we’ll take care to let you know 
when anybody comes for the letter.’ Well, I waited there three 
days, and began to think that nobody ever would come. At 
last the clerk whispered to me, ‘ Here ! Detective ! Somebody’s 
come for the letter ! ’ ‘ Keep him a minute,’ said I, and 1 ran 

round to the outside of the office. There 1 saw a young chap 
with the ai)pearance of an Ostler, holding a horse by the bridle 
— stretching the bridle across the pavement, while he waited at 
the Post Office Window for the letter. I began to pat the 
horse, and that ; and I said to the boy, ‘ Why, this is Mr. Jones’s 
Mare ! ’ ‘ No. It an’t.’ ‘ No ? ’ said I. ‘ She’s very like Mr. 

Jones’s Mare!’ ‘She an’t Mr. Jones’s Mare, anyhow,’ says 
he. ‘ It’s Mr. So and So’s, of the Warwick Arms.’ And up he 
jumped, and off he went — letter and all. I got a cab, followed 
on the box, and was so quick after him that I came into the 
stable-yard of the Warwick Arms, by one gate, just as he came 
in by another. I went into the bar, where there was a young 
woman serving, and called for a glass of brandy-and-water. He 
came in directly, and handed her the letter. She casually 
looked at it, without saying anything, and stuck it up behind 
the glass over the chimney-piece. What was to be done next ? 

“ I turned it over in my mind w^hile I drank my brandy-and- 
water (looking pretty sharp at the letter the while) but I couldn’t 
see my way out of it at all. I tried to get lodgings in the house, 
but there had been a horse-fair, or something of that sort, and 
it was full. I was obliged to put up somewhere else, but I came 
backwards and forwards to the bar for a couple of days, and 
there was the letter always behind the glass. At last 1 thought 
I’d write a letter to Mr. Pigeon myself, and see what that would 
do. So I wrote one, and posted it, but I purposely addressed 
it, Mr. John Pigeon, instead of Mr. Thomas Pigeon, to see what 
that wmuld do. In the morning (a very wet morning it was) I 
watched the postman down the street, and cut into the bar, 
just before he reached the Warwick Arms. In he came pres- 
17* 


394 - THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 

ently with my letter. ' ‘Is there a Mr. John Pigeon staying 
here?’ ‘ No ! — stop a bit though,’ says the barmaid ; and she 
took down the letter behind the glass. ‘No,’ says she, ‘it’s 
Thomas, and he is not staying here. Would you do me a fa- 
vour, and post this for me, as it is so wet ? ’ The Postman said 
Yes ; she folded it in another envelope, directed it, and gave it 
him. He put it in his hat, and away he went. 

“I had no difficulty in finding out the direction of that letter. 
It was addressed, Mr. Thomas Pigeon, Post Office, R , North- 

amptonshire, to be left till called for. ’ Off I started directly ' 

for R ; I said the same at the Post Office there, as I had 

said at B ; and again I waited three days before anybody 

came. At last another chap on horseback came. ‘ Any letters 
for Mr. Thomas Pigeon ? ’ ‘ Where do you come from ? ’ 

‘New Inn, near R .’ He got the letter, and away he went 

at a canter. 

“ I made my inquiries about the New Inn, near R , and 

hearing it was a solitary sort of house, a little in the horse line, 
about a couple of miles from the station, I thought I’d go and 
have a look at it. I found it what it had been described, and 
sauntered in, to look about me. The landlady was in the bar, 
and I was trying to get into conversation with her ; asked her 
how business was, and spoke about the wet weather, and so on ; 
when I saw, through an open door, three men sitting by the fire 
in a sort of parlor, or kitchen ; and one of those men, accord- 
ing to the description I had of him, was Tally-ho Thompson ! 

“ I went and sat down among ’em, and tried to make things 
agreeable ; but they were very shy — wouldn’t talk at all — looked 
at me, and at one another, in a way quite the reverse of socia- 
ble. I reckoned ’em up, and finding that they were all three 
bigger men than me, and considering that their looks were ugly 
— that it was a lonely place — railroad station two miles off— 
and night coming on — thought I couldn’t do better than have a 
drop of brandy-and-water to keep my courage up. So I called 
for my brandy-and-water ; and as I was sitting drinking it by 
the fire, d’hompson got up and went out. 

“Now the difficulty of it was, that I wasn’t sure it 
Thompson, because I had never set eyes on him before ; and 
what I had wanted was to be quite certain of him. However, 
there was nothing for it now, but to follow, and put a bold face 
upon it. I found him talking, outside in the yard, with the 
landlady. It turned out afterwards that he was wanted by a 
Northampton officer for something else, and that, knowing that 
officer to be pock-marked (as I am myself), he mistook me for 


THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 


395 


him. As I have observed, I found him talking to the landlady, 
outside. I put my hand upon his shoulder — this way — and said, 
‘I'ally-ho Thompson, it’s no use. I know you. I’m an officer 
from London, and I take you into custody for felony ! ’ ‘ That 

be d d ! ’ says Tally-ho Thompson. 

“We went back into the house, and the two friends began to 
cut up rough, and their looks didn’t please me at all, I assure 
you. ‘ Let the man go. What are you going to do with him ? ’ 
‘ I’ll tell you what I’m going to do with him. I’m going to 
take him to London to-night, as sure as I’m alive. I ’m not 
alone here, whatever you may think. You mind your own 
business, and keep yourselves to yourselves. It’ll be better 
for you, for I know you both very well, /’d never seen or 
heard of ’em in all my life, but my bouncing cowed ’em a bit, 
and they kept off, while Thompson was making ready to go. 
I thought to myself, however, that they might be coming after 
me on the dark road, to rescue Thompson ; so I said to the 
landlady, ‘ What men have you got in the house. Missis ? ’ ‘ We 

haven’t got no men here,’ she says, sulkily. ‘You have got an 
ostler, I suppose ?’ ‘Yes, we’ve got an ostler.’ ‘Let me see 
him.’ Presently he came, and a shaggy-headed young fellow 
he was. ‘Now attend to me, young man,’ says I ; ‘I’m a 
Detective Officer from London. This man’s name is Thomp- 
son. I have taken him into custody for felony. I’m going to 
take him to the railroad station. I call uj)on you in the 
Queen’s name to assist me ; and mind you, my friend, you ’ll get 
yourself into more trouble than you know of, if you don’t ! ’ You. 
never saw a i^erson oi)en his eyes so wide. ‘ Now, Thomi^son, 
come along ! ’ says I. But when I took out the handcuffs. 
Thompson cries, ‘ No ! None of that ! I won’t stand them ! I’ll 
go along with you quiet, but I w'on’t bear none of that ! ’ ‘ Tall}^- 

ho Thompson,’ I said, ‘ I’m willing to behave as a man to you, 
if you are willing to behave as a man to me. Give me your 
word that you ’ll come peaceably along, and I don’t want to 
handcuff you.’ ‘ I will,’ says Thoiupson, ‘ but I ’ll have a glass 
of brandy first.’ ‘ i don’t care if I ’ve another,’ said 1. ‘ We’ll 

have two more. Missis,’ said the friends, ‘ and con-found you. 
Constable, you’ll give your man a drop, won’t you.?’ I was 
agreeable to that, so we had it all round, and then my man and 
I took 'fally-ho I'hompson safe to the railroad, and 1 carried 
him to London that night. He was afterwards acquitted, on 
account of a defect in the evidence ; and I understand he always 
praises me up to the skies, and says I ’m one of the best of 
men.” 


39 ^ 


THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 


This story coming to a termination amidst general applause, 
Inspector Wield, after a little grave smoking, fixes his eye on 
his host, and thus delivers himself; 

“ It wasn’t a bad plant that of mine, on Fikey, the man 
accused of forging the Sou’ Western Railway debentures— it 
was only t’ other day— because the reason why ? I ’ll tell 
you. 


“ I had information that Fikey and his brother kept a factory 
over yonder there,” — indicating any region on the Surrey side 
of the river— “ where he bought second-hand carriages ; so after 
I ’d tried in vain to get hold of him by other means, I wrote 
him a letter in an assumed name, saying that I ’d got a horse 
and shay to dispose of, and would drive down next day that he 
might view the lot, and make an olfer— very reasonable it was, 
I said— a reg’lar bargain. Straw and me then went off to a 
friend of mine that’s in the livery and job business, and hired a 

turn-out for the day, a precious smart turn-out it was quite a 

slap-up thing ! Down we drove, accordingly, with a friend 
(who’s not in the Force himself) ; and leaving my friend in the 
shay near a public house, to take care of the horse, we went to 
the factory, which was some little way off. In the factory, there 
was a number of strong fellows at work, and after reckoning ’em 
up, it was clear to me that it w'ouldn’t do to try it on there 
They were too many for us. We must get our man out of 
doors. ‘ Mr. Fikey at home } ’ ‘ No, he ain’t.’ ‘ Expected 

home soon?’ ‘ Why, no, not soon.’ ‘Ah! is his brother 
here?’ ‘/’m his brother.’ ‘Oh! well, this is an ill-con- 


wenience, this is. I wrote him a letter yesterday, saying I ’d 
i-out to dispose of, and I ’ve took the trouble to 


got a little turn 

p . ^ , ■ ' ' ’ ^ iiJC UULlUie ic 

bring the turn-out down, a purpose, and now he ain’t in the way. 

‘ No, he ain’t in the way. You couldn’t make it convenient to 
call again, could you ? ’ ‘ Why, no, I couldnT. 1 want to sell • 

that’s the fact ; and I can’t put it off. Could you find hiin 
anywheres?’ At first he said No he couldn’t, and then he 
wasn t sure about it, and then he ’d go and try. So at last he 
went up stairs, where there was a sort of loft, and presently 
down comes my man himself, in his shirt-sleeves. 

Well, he says, ‘this seems to be rayther a pressing matter 
^ ^ layfher a pressing matter, and 

you 1 find It a bargam-dirt-cheap.’ ‘ I ain’t in partickler w^ant 
of a bargain just now^’ he says, ‘but where is it ’ ‘Why’ I 
says,^ ‘ the turn-out’s just outside. Come and look at it.’ He 
hasn t any suspicions, and away we go. And the first thin^ 
that happens is, that the horse runs away wuth my friend (who 


THE DETECTIVE POLICE, 


397 


knows no more about driving than a child) when he takes a little 
trot along the road to show his paces. You never saw such a 
game in your life ! 

“ When the bolt is over, and the turn-out has come to a stand- 
still again, Fikey walks round and round it as grave as a judge 
— me too. ‘There, sir!’ I says. ‘There’s a neat thing!’ 
‘ It ain’t a bad style of thing,’ he says. ‘ I believe you,’ says I. 
‘ And there’s a horse ! ’ — for I saw him looking at it. ‘ Rising 
eight ! ’ I says, rubbing his fore-legs. (Bless you, there ain’t 
a man in the world knows less of horses than I do, but I’d heard 
my friend at the Livery Stables say he was eight year old, so I 
says, as knowing as possible, ‘Rising eight.’) ‘Rising eight, is 
he?’ says he. ‘Rising eight’ says I. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘what 
do you want for it ? ’ ‘ Why, the first and last figure for the 

whole concern is five-and-twenty pound ! ’ ‘ That’s very 

cheap ! ’ he says, looking at me. ‘ Ain’t it ? ’ I says. ‘ I told 
you it was a bargain ! Now, without any higgling and haggling 
about it, what I want is to sell, and that’s my price. Further, 
I ’ll make it easy to you, and take half the money down, and 
you can do a bit of stiff* for the balance.’ ‘Well,’ he says 
again, ‘ that’s very cheap.’ ‘ I believe you,’ says I ; ‘ get in and 
try it, and you’ll buy it. Come ! take a trial ! ’ 

“ Ecod, he gets in, and we get in, andAve drive along the 
road, to show him to one of the railway clerks that was hid in 
the public-house window to identify him. But the clerk was 
bothered, and didn’t know whether it was him, or wasn’t — be- 
cause the reason why ? I’ll tell you, — on account of his having 
shaved his whiskers: ‘It’s a clever little horse,’ he says, ‘and 
trots well ; and the shay runs light.’ ‘ Not a doubt about it,’ 
I says. ‘ And now, Mr. Fikey, I may as well make it all right, 
without wasting any more of your time. The fact is"^ I’m In- 
S])ector Wield, and you’re my prisoner.’ ‘You don’t mean 
that ? ’ he says. ‘ I do, indeed.’ ‘ Then burn my body,’ says 
P'ikey, ‘if this ain’t too bad ! ’ 

• “ Perhaps you never saw a man so knocked over with sur- 
prise. ‘ I hope you’ll let me have my coat ? ’ he says. ‘ By 
all means.’ ‘ Well, then, let’s drive to the factory.’ ‘ Why, not 
exactly that, I think,’ said I ; ‘ I’ve been there, once before, to- 
day. Suppose we send for it.’ He saw it was no go, so he 
sent for it, and put it on, and we drove him up to London, 
comfortable.” 

This reminiscence is in the height of its success, when a 


Give a bill. 


398 


THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 


general proposal is made to the fresh-complexioned, smooth- 
faced officer, with the strange air of simplicity, to tell the 
“ Butcher’s Story.” 

The fresh-complexioned, smooth-faced officer, with the strange 
air of simplicity, began, with a rustic smile, and in a soft, 
wheedling tone of voice, to relate the Butcher’s Story, thus : 

“ It’s just about six years ago, now, since information was 
given at Scotland Yard of their being extensive robberies of 
lawns and silks going on, at some wholesale houses in the City. 
Directions were given for the business being looked into; and 
Straw, and Fendall, and me, we were all in it.” 

“ When you received your instructions,” said we, “you went 
away, and held a sort of Cabinet Council together ! ” 

I'he smooth-faced officer coaxingly replied, “Ye-es. Just so. 
We turned it over among ourselves a good deal. It appeared, 
when we went into it, that the goods were sold by the receivers 
extraordinarily cheap — much cheaper than they could have been 
if they had been honestly come by. The receivers were in the 
trade, and kept capital shops — establishments of the first 
resj^ectability — one of ’em at the West End, one down in West- 
minster. After a lot of watching and inquiry, and this and 
that among ourselves, we found that the job was managed, and 
the purchases of the stolen goods made, at a little ])ublic-house 
near Smithfield, down by St. Bartholomew’s; where the Ware- 
house Porters, who were the thieves, took ’em for that purpose, 
don’t you see .? and-made appointments to meet the peoi)le 
that went between themselves and the receivers. This ))ubiic- 
house was princij^ally used by journeymen butchers from the 
country, out of place, and in want of situations ; so, what did 
we do, but — ha, ha, ha ! — we agreed that I should be dressed 
up like a*butcher myself, and go and live there ! ” 

Never, surely, was a faculty of observation better brought to 
bear upon a purpose, than that which picked out this officer for 
the ]9art. Nothing in all creation, could have suited him better. 
Even while he spoke, he became a greasy, sleepy, shy, good-- 
natured, chuckle-headed, unsuspicious, and confiding young 
butcher. His very hair seemed to have suet in it, as he made 
it smooth ui)on his head, and his fresh complexion to be lubri- 
cated by large quantities of animal food. 

— “ So I — ha, ha, ha 1 ” (always with the confiding snigger 
of the foolish young butcher) “ so I dressed myself in the 
regular way, made up a little bundle of clothes, and went to 
the public-house, and asked if I could have a lodging there ? 
They says, ‘^Yes, you can have a lodging here,’ and 1 got a bed- 


THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 


399 


room, and settled myself down in the tap. There was a num- 
ber of people about the i)lace, and coming backwards and 
forwards to t-he house ; and first one says, and then another 
says, ‘Are you from the countr)', young man ! ’ ‘ Yes,’ I says, ‘ I 
am. I’m come out of Northamptonshire, and I’m quite lonely 
here, for I don’t know London at all, and it’s such a mighty big 
town ?’ ‘ It’s a big town,’ they says. iOh, it’s d^vet'y big town ! ’ 
I says. ‘ Really and truly I never was in such a town. It quite 
confuses me ! ’ — and all that, you know. 

“When some of the Journeymen Butchers that used the 
house, found that I wanted a place, they says, ‘ Oh, we’ll get 
you a place !’ And they actually took me to a sight of places, 
in Newgate market, Newport Market, Clare, Carnaby — I don’t 
know where all. But the wages was — ha, ha, ha ! — was not 
sufficient, and I never could suit myself, don’t you see? Some 
of the queer frequenters of the house, were a little suspicious 
of me at first,' and I was obliged to be very cautious indeed, 
how I communicated with Straw or Fendall. Sometimes, when 
I went out, pretending to stop and look into the shop-windows, 
and just casting my eye round, I used to see some of ’em fol- 
lowing me ; but being perhaps better accustomed than they 
thought for, to that sort of thing, I used to lead ’em on as far 
as I thought necessary or convenient — sometimes a long way — 
and then turn sharp round, and meet ’em, and say, ‘ Oh, dear, 
how glad I am to come upon you so fortunate ! This London’s 
such a place. I’m blowed if I ain’t lost again!’ And then 
we’d go back altogether, to the public house, and — ha, ha, ha ! 
and smoke our pii)es, don’t you see? 

“They were very attentive to me, I am sure. It was a 
common thing, while I was living there, for some of ’em to 
take me out, and show me London. They showed me the 
Prisons — showed me Newgate — and when they showed me 
I Newgate, I stops at the place where the Porters pitch their 
I loads, and says, ‘ Oh, dear, is this where they hang the men ! 
’Oh Lori’ ‘That!’ they says, /what a simple cove he is! 
That an’t it ! ’ And then, they pointed out which was it, and I 
says ‘ Lor ! ’ and they says, ‘Now you’ll know it agen, won’t 
you?’ And I said I thought I should if I tried hard — and I 
assure you I kei)t a sharp look out for the City Police when we 
were out in this wav, and if any of ’em had happened to know 
me, and had spoke to me, it would have been all up in a min- 
ute. Hosvever, by good luck, such a thing never happened, 
and all went on quiet : though the difficulties I had in commu- 
nicating with my brother officers were quite extraordinary. 


400 


THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 


^‘The stolen goods that were brought to the public-house by 
the Warehouse Porters, were always disposed of in a back par- 
lor. For a long time I never could get into this parlor, or see 
what was done there. As 1 sat smoking my pipe, like an inno- 
cent young chap, by the tap-room fire, Pd hear some of the 
parties , to the robbery, as they came in and out, say softly to 
the landlord, ‘Who’s that? VVhat does do here?’ ‘Bless 
your soul,’ says the landlord, ‘ He’s only a’ — ha, ha, ha ! — ‘he’s 
only a green young fellow from the country, as is looking for a 
butcher’s sitiwation. Don’t mind him ! ’ So, in course of time, 
they were so convinced of my being green, and got to be so ac- 
customed to me, that I was as free of the parlor as any of ’em, 
and I have seen as much as Seventy Pounds worth of fine lawn 
sold there, in one night, that was stolen from a warehouse on 
Friday Street. After the sale the buyers always stood treat — 
hot supper, or dinner, or what not — and they’d say on those 
occasions, ‘ Come on, Butcher ! Put your best leg foremost, 
young ’un, and walk into it !’ Which I used to do — and hear, 
at table, all manner of particulars that it was very important 
for us Detectives to know. 

“ This went on for ten weeks. I lived in the public-house all 
the time, and never was out of the Butcher’s dress — except in 
bed. At last, when I had followed seven of the thieves, and 
set ’em to rights — that’s an expression of ours, don’t you see, 
by which I mean to say that 1 traced ’em, and found out where 
the robberies were done, and all about ’em — Straw, and Fendall, 
and I, gave one another the office, and at a time agreed upon, 
a descent was made upon the public-house, and the apprehen- 
sion effected. One of the first things the officers did, was to 
collar me — for the parties to the robbery weren’t to suppose 
yet, that I was anything but a Butcher — on which the landlord 
cries out, ‘ Don’t take hwt^ he says, ‘ whatever you do ! He’s 
only a poor young chap from the country, and butter wouldn’t 
melt in his mouth ! ’ However, they— ha, ha, ha ! — they took 
me, and pretended to search my bedroom, where nothing was 
found but an old fiddle belonging to the landlord, that had got 
there somehow or another. But, it entirely changed the land- 
lord’s opinion, for when it was produced, he says ‘ My fiddle ! 
The Butcher’s a pur-loiner ! I give him into custody for the 
robbery of a musical instrument ! ’ 

“The man that had stolen the goods in Friday Street Avas not 
taken yet. He had told me, in confidence, that he had his 
suspicions there was something wrong (on account of the City 
Police having captured one of the party), and that he was going 


THE DETECTIVE POLICE, 


40 r 

to make himself scarce. I asked him, ‘ Where do you mean 
to go, Mr. Shepherdson ? ’ ‘ Why, Butcher,’ says he, ‘ the 

Setting Moon, in the Commercial Road, is a snug house, and I 
shall hang out there, for a time. I shall call myself Simpson, 
which appears to me to be a modest sort of a name. Perhaps 
you’ll give us a look in. Butcher ? ’ ‘ Well,’ says I, ‘ I think 1 

will give you a call’ — which I fully intended, don’t you see, 
because, of course, he was to be taken ! I went over to the 
Setting Moon next day, with a brother officer, and asked at the 
bar for Simpson. They pointed out his room, up-stairs. As we 
were going up, he looks down over the banisters, and calls out, 
‘ Halloa, Butcher ! is that you ? ’ ‘Yes, it’s me. How do you 
find yourself? ’ ‘ Bobbish,’ he says ; ‘ but who’s that with you ? ’ 
‘ It’s only a young man, that’s a friend of mine,’ I says. ‘ Come 
along, then,’ says he ; ‘ any friend of the Butcher’s is as welcome 
as the Butcher ! ’ So, I made my friend acquainted with him, 
and we took him into custody. 

“You have no idea, sir, what a sight it was, in Court, when 
they first knew that I wasn’t a Butcher, after all ! I wasn’t pro- 
duced at the first examination, when there was a remand ; but I 
was at the second. And when I stepped into the box, in full 
police uniform, and the whole party saw how they had been 
done, actually a groan of horror and dismay proceeded from ’em 
in the dock ! 

“ At the Old Bailey, when their trials came on, Mr. Clarkson 
was engaged for the defence, and he couldtlt make out how it 
was, about the Butcher. He thought, all along, it was a real 
Butcher. When the council for the prosecution said, ‘ I will 
now call before you, gentleman, the Police-officer,’ meaning my- 
self, Mr. Clarkson says, ‘Why Police-officer? Why more Po- 
lice-officers? I don’t want Police. We have had a great deal 
too much of the Police. I want the Butcher ! However, sir, 
he had the Butcher and the Police-officer, both in one. Out of 
seven prisoners committed for trial, five were found guilty, and 
some of ’em were transported. The respectable firm at the 
West End got a term of imprisonment ; and that’s the 
Butcher’s Story ? ” 

The story done, the chuckle-headed Butcher again resolved 
himself into the smooth-faced Detective. But, he was so ex- 
tremely tickled by their having taken him about, when he was 
that Dragon in disguise, to show him London, that he could 
not help reverting to that point in his narrative ; and gently re- 
peating with the Butcher snigger, “ ‘ Oh, dear,’ I says, ‘ is that 


402 


THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 


where they hang the men ? Oh, Lor ! ' ‘ That / says they. 
‘ What a simple cove he is ! ’ ” 

It being now late, and the party very modest in their fear 
of being too diffuse, there were some tokens of separation when 
Sergeant Dornton, the soldierly-looking man, said, looking 
round liiin with a smile : 

“ Before we break up, sir, perhaps you might have some 
amusement in hearing of the Adventures of a Carpet Bag. They 
are very short ; and, I think, curious.” 

We welcomed the Carpet Bag, as cordially as Mr. Shepherd- 
son welcomed the false Butcher at the Setting Moon. .Sergeant 
Dornton proceeded. 

“In 1847, I was dispatched to Chatham, in search of one 
Mesheck, a Jew. He had been carrying on, pretty heavily, in 
the bill-stealing way, getting acceptances from young men of 
good connexions (in the army chiefly), on pretence of discount, 
and bolting with the same. 

“Mesheck was off, before I got to Chatham. All I could 
learn about him was, that he had gone, probably to London, 
and had with him — a Carpet Bag. 

“ I came back to town, by the last train from Blackwall, 
and made inquiries concerning a Jew passenger with— a Car- 
pet Bag. 

“ The office was shut up, it being the last train. There were 
only two or three porters left. Looking after a Jew with a Car- 
pet Bag, on the Blackwall Railway, which was then the high 
load to a great Military Depot, was worse than looking after a 
needle in a hayrick. But it happened that one of these porters 
had carried, for a certain Jew, to a certain public-house, a cer- 
tain — Carpet Bag. 

“ I went to the public-house, but the Jew had only left his 
there for a few hours, and had called for it in a cab, and 
taken it away. I put such questions there, and to the porter, 
as I thought prudent, and got at this description of— the Car- 
pet Bag. 

“ It was a bag which had, on one side of it, worked in worsted,' 
a green parrot on a stand. A green parrot on a stand was the 
means by which to identify that — Carpet Bag. 

“I traced Mesheck, by means of this green parrot ©n a stand, 
to Cheltenham, to Birmingham, to Liverpool, to the Atlantic 
Ocean. At Liverpool he was too many for me. He had gone 
to the United States, and I gave up all thoughts of Mesheck, 
and likewise of his — Carpet Bag. 

“Many months afterwards— near a year afterwards— there 


THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 


403 


\ 

was a bank in Ireland robbed' of seven thousand pounds, by a 
person of the name of Doctor Dundey, who escaped to America; 
from which country some of the stolen notes came home. He 
was supposed to have bought a farm in New Jersey. Under 
proj)er management, that estate could be seized and sold, for 
^ the benefit of the parties he had defrauded. I was sent off to 
America for this purpose. 

“ I landed at Boston. I went on to New York. T found that 
I he had lately changed New A'ork paper-money for New Jersey 

I paper money, and had banked cash in New Brunswick. To 
take this Doctor Dundey, it was necessary to entrap him into 
the State of New York, which required a deal of artitice and 
trouble. At one time, he couldn’t be drawn into an appoint- 
ment. At another time, he a[)pointed to come and meet me, 
and a New York officer, on a pretext 1 made ; and then his chil- 
dren had the measels. At last he came, per steamboat, and I 
took him, and lodged him in a New York prison called the 
Tombs ; which 1 dare say you know, sir.?” 
j^^Editorial acknowledgment to that effect. 

“ 1 went to the Tombs, on the morning after his capture, to 
attend the examination before the magistrate. 1 was passing 
through the magistrate’s private room, when, happening to look 
round me to take notice of the place, as we generally have a 
habit of doing, I clapped my eyes in one corner on a — Carpet 
Bag. 

“ What did I see upon that Carpet Bag, if you’ll believe me, 
but a green parrot on a stand, as large as life ! 

- “ ‘That Carpet Bag, with the representation of a green par- 
rot on a stand,’ said I, ‘ belongs to an English Jew, named 
Aaron Mesheck, and to no other man, alive or dead 1’ 

“ I give you my word the New York Police officers were 
doubled up with surj^rise. • 

“ ‘ How do you ever come to know that ?’ said they. 

“ ‘ I think I ought to know that green parrot by this time,’ 
said I ; ‘ for I have had as pretty a dance after that bird, at home, 
as ever I had in all my life ! ’ ” . 

“ And was it Mesheck’s ? ” we submissively inquired. 

‘‘ Was it, sir ? Of course it was ! He was in custody for an- 
other offence, in that very identical d'ombs, at that very identi- 
cal time. And, more than tiiat ! Some memoranda, relating 
to the fraud for which I had vainly endeavored to take him, 
were found to be, at that moment, lying in that very same indi- 
vidual — Carpet Bag ! ” 


404 


THE ^DETECTIVE POLICE, 


Such are the curious coincidences and such is the peculiar 
ability, always shc^-pening and being improved by practice, and 
always adapting itself to every variety of circumstances, and 
opposing itself to every new device that perverted ingenuity can 
invent, for which this important social branch of the public ser- 
vice is remarkable ! For ever on the watch, 'with their wits 
stretched to the utmost, these officere have, from day to day 
and year to year, to set themselves against every novelt}'’ of 
trickery and dexterity that the combined imaginations of all the 
lawless rascals in England can devise, and to keep pace with 
every such invention that comes out. In the Courts of Justice, 
the materials of thousands of such stories as we have narrated — 
often elevated into the marvellous and romantic, by the circum- 
stances of the case — are dryly compressed into the set phrase, 
“ In consequence of information I received, I did so and so.” 
Suspicion was to be directed, by careful inference and deduction, 
upon the right person ; the right person was to be taken, 
wherever he had gone, or whatever he was doing to avoid de- 
tection : he is taken ; there he is at the bar ; that is enough. 
From information I, the officer, received, I did it ; and accord- 
ing to the custom in these cases, I say no more. 

These games of chess, played with live pieces, are played be- 
fore small audiences, and are chronicled nowhere. The inter- 
est of the game supports the i3layer. Its results are enough for 
Justice. To compare great things with small, suppose Lever- 
RiER or Adams informing the public that from information he 
had leceived he had discovered anew planet j or Columbus 
informing the public of his day that from information he had 
received he had discovered a new continent; so the Detec- 
tives inform it that they have discovered a new fraud or an of- 
fender, and the process is unknown. 

Thus at midnight, closed the proceedings of our curious and 
interesting party. But one other circumstance finally wound 
up the evening, after our Detective guests had left us. One of 
the sharpest among them, and the officer best acquainted with 
the Swell Mob, had his pocket picked, going home ! 


THREE EETECTIVE^^ ANEQDOTES. 


405 


THREE “ DETECTIVE ” ANECDOTES. 


I. THE PAIR OF GLOVES. 

T’S a singler story, Sir,” said Inspector Wield, of the 
Detective Police, who, in company with Sergeants 
Dornton and Mith, paid us another twilight visit, one 
July evening “ and I’ve been thinking you might 
like to know it. 

“It’s concerning the murder of the young woman, Eliza 
Grim wood,, some years ago, over in the Waterloo Road. She 
was commonly called The Countess, because of her handsome 
appearance and her proud way of carrying of herself ; and when 
I saw the poor Countess (1 had known her well to speak to), 
lying dead, with her throat cut, on the door of her bed-room, 
you’ll believe me that a variety of reflections calculated to make 
a man rather low in his spirits, came into my head. 

“That’s neither here nor there. I went to the house tlie 
morning after the murder, and examined the body, and made 
a general observation of the bedroom where it was. Turning 
down the pillow of the bed with my hand I found, underneath it, 
a pair of gloves. A pair of gentleman’s dress gloves, very dirty ; 
and inside the lining, the letters Tr, and a cross. 

“ Well, sir, I took them gloves away, and I showed ’em to the 
magistrate, over at Union Hall, before whom the case was. He 
says, ‘ Wield,’ he says, ‘ there’s no doubt this is a discovery that 
may lead to something very important ; and- what you have got 
to do. Wield, is, to find out the owner of these gloves.’ 

“ I was of the same opinion, of course, and I went at it im- 
mediately. I looked at the gloves pretty narrowly, and it was 
my opinion that they had been cleaned. There was a smell of 
sulphur and rosin about ’em, you know, which cleaned gloves 
usually have, more or less. I took ’em over to a friend of mine 
at Kennington, who was in that line, and I put it to him, 

‘ What do you say now ? Have these gloves been cleaned ? ’ 

‘ These gloves have been cleaned,’ says he. ‘ Have you any 
idea who cleaned them ? ’ says I. ‘ Not at all,’ says he ; ‘ I’ve 
a very distinct idea who didn't clean ’em, and that’s myself. But 
I’ll tell you what, Wield, there ain’t above eight or nine reg’lar 
glove cleaners in London,’ — there were not, at that time, it 




4c6 


THREE ^^DETECTIVE^\ ANECDOTES. 


seems ‘and I think I can give you their addresses, and you 
may find out, by that means, who did clean ’em.’ Accordingly 
he gave me the directions, and I went here, and I went there, 
and I looked up this man, and I looked up that man ; but, 
though tjiey all agreed that the gloves had been cleaned, f 
couldn’t find the man, woman, or child, that had cleaned that 
aforesaid pair of gloves. 

“What with this person not being at home, and that person 
being expected home in the afternoon, and so forth, the inquiry 
took me three days. On the evening of the third day, coming 
ovei Waterloo Bridge from the Surrey side of the river, quite beat 
and veiy much vexed and disappointed, I thought I’d have a 
shilling’s worth of entertainment at the Lyceum Theatre to 
freshen myself up. So I went into the Pit, at half-price, and I sat 
myself down next to a very quiet, modest sort of young man. 
Seeing I was a stranger (which 1 thought it just as well to appear 
to be) he told me the names of the actors on the stage, and we 
got into conversation. Wdien the play was over, we came out 
together, and I said, ‘ We’ve been very companionable and 
agreeable, and perhaps you wouldn’t object to a drain .? ’ ‘Well 
you re very good,’ says he ; ‘1 shoii ld?i' t oh]Qct to a drain.’ Ac- 
cordingly, we went to a public house, near the Theatre, sat our- 
se yes down in a quiet room up-stairs on the first floor, and 
called for a pint of halt-and-half apiece, and a pijie. 

“ Well, Sir, we put our pipes aboard, and wc drank our half- 
and-half, and sat a-talking very sociably, when the young man 
says, ‘ You must excuse me stopping very long,’ he says, ‘ be- 
cause I’m forced to go home in good time. I must be at’vvork 
all night. ‘ At work all night .? ’ says I. ‘ You ain’t a Baker ? ’ 
No, he says, laughing, ‘ I ain’t a baker.’ ‘ I thought not,’ says 
I, you haven’t the looks of a baker.’ ‘No,’ says he, ‘ I’m a 
glove-cleaner.’ 


I never was more astonished in my life, than when I heard 
theni words come out of his lips. ‘ You’re a glove-cleaner, are 
you ? says I ‘ Yes,’ he saj s, ‘ I am.’ ‘ Then, perha|)s,’ says I, 
taking the gloves out of my pocket, ‘ you can tell me who 
cleaned this pair of gloves ? It’s a rum story,’ I says. ‘ I was 
dining over at I.ambeth, the other day, at a free-and-easy_nuite 
piomiscuous— with a public company— when some gentleman, 
he left these gloves behind him : Another gentleman and me 
yon see, we laid a wager of a sovereign, that I wouldn’t find out 
w lo (hey belong to. I’ve spent as much as seven shillings already 
m dying to discover : but if you could help me. I’d ttand an- 
other seven and welcome. You see there’s Tr and a cross, in 


THREE ^^HETECT/FE” AIVECDOTES. 


407 


I side.’ ‘ / see,’ he says. ‘ Bless you, /know these gloves very 
li' well ! I’ve seen dozens of pairs belonging to the same party.’ 

‘ No ? ’ says I ‘ Yes,’ says he. ‘ Then you know who cleaned 
’em ?” says I. ‘ Rather so,’ says he. ‘ My father cleaned ’em.’ 

“Where does your father live?’ says 1. ‘Just round the 
corner,’ says the young man, ‘near Exeter Street, here. He’ll 
tell you who they belong to directly.’ ‘ Would you come round 
with me near?’ says I. ‘ Certainly,’ says he, ‘ but you needn’t 
tell my father that you found me at the play, you know, because 
he mightn’t like it.’ ‘ All right ! ’ We went round to the place, 

* and there we found an old man in a white apron, with two or 
three daughters, all rubbing and cleaning away at lots of gloves, 
in a front parlour. ‘ Oh, Father ! ’ says the young man, ‘ here’s 
a person been and made a bet about the ownership of a pair of 
gloves, and I’ve told him you can settle it.’ ‘ Good evening. 
Sir,’ says I to the old gentleman. ‘Here’s the gloves your son 
speaks of. Letters Tr, you see, and a cross.’ ‘ Oh yes,’ he 
says, ‘ I know these gloves very well ; I’ve cleaned dozens of 
pairs of ’em. They belong to Mr. Trinkle, the great upholsterer 
in Cheapside.’ ‘Did you get ’em from Mr. Trinkle, direct,’ 
says I, ‘if you’ll excuse my asking the question? ’ ‘ No,’ says 

he ; ‘ Mr. Trinkle always sends ’em to Mr. Phibbs’s, the haber- 
dasher’s, opposite his shop, and the haberdasher sends ’em to ' 
me.’ ‘ Perhaps wouldn’t object to a drain?’ says I. ‘ Not 
in the least ! ’ says he. So 1 took the old gentleman out, and 
had a little more talk with him and his son, over a glass, and 
we parted excellent friends. 

“-This was late on Saturday night. First thing on the Mon- 
day morning, I went to the haberdasher’s shop, opposite Mr. 
Trinkle’ s, the great upholsterer’s in Cheapside. ‘ Mr.Phibbs in 
the way ?’ ‘ My name is Phibbs.’ ‘ Oh ! I believe you sent this 
pair of gloves to be cleaned ? ’ ‘ Yes, I did, foryoung Mr. Trinkle 
over the way. There he is, in the shop ! ‘ Oh ! that’s him in the 

shop, is it ? Him in the green coat ? ’ ‘ The same individual.’ 

‘ Well Mr. Phibbs, this is an unpleasant affair ; but the fact is, I am , 
Inspector Wield of the Detective Police, and I found these 
gloves under the pillow of the young woman that was murdered 
the other day, over in the Waterloo Road ? ’ ‘ Good Heaven ! ’ 

says he. ‘ He’s a most respectable young man, and if his father 
was to hear of it, it would be the ruin of him ! ’ ‘ I’m very 

sorry for it,’ says I, ‘ but I must take him into custody.’ ‘ Good 
Heaven!’ says Mr. Phibbs again ; ‘ can nothing be done?’ 

‘ Nothing,’ says I. ‘ Will you allow me to call him over here, 
says he, ‘ that his father may not see it done ? ’ ‘I don’t object 


4o8 


THREE *^DETECT/FE” ANECDOTES 


to that,’ says I ; ‘but unfortunately, Mr. Phibbs, I can’t allow of 
any communication between you. If any was attempted, I 
- should have to interfere directly. Perhaps you’ll bctkon him 
over here ? ’ Mr. Phibbs went to the door and beckoned, and 
the young fellow came across the street directly ; a snmrt, brisk 
young fellow. 

“ Good morning. Sir,’ says I. ‘ Good morning. Sir,’ says he. 

‘ Would you allow me to inquire. Sir,’ says I, ‘ if you ever had any 
acquaintance with a party of the name of Grimwood ? ‘ Grim- 

wood ! Grimwood ! ’ says he, ‘ No ! ’ ‘ You know the Waterloo 
Road ? ’ ‘ Oh ! of course I know the Waterloo Road ! ’ ‘ Hap- 

pen to have heard of a young woman being murdered there ? ’ 
‘Yes, I read it in the paper, and very sorry I was, to read it. 

‘ Here’s a pair of gloves belonging to you, that I found under 
her pillow the morning afterwards ! ’ 

“ He was in a dreadful state. Sir ; a dreadful state ! ‘ Mr. 

Wield,’ he says, ‘ upon my solemn oath I never was there. I 
never so much as saw her, to my knowledge, in my life ! ’ ‘ I am 
very sorry,’ says I. ‘To tell you the truth ; I don’t think you 
are the murderer, but I must take you to Union Hall in a cab. 
However, I think it’s a case of that sort, that at present, at all 
events, the magistrate will hear it in private.’ 

“ A private examination took place, and then it came out that 
this young man was acquainted with a cousin of the unfortunate 
Eliza Grimwood, and that, calling to see this cousin a day or 
two before the murder, he left these gloves upon the table. 
Who should come in, shortly afterwards, but Eliza Grimwood ! 
‘Whose gloves are these? ’she says, taking ’em up. ‘Those 
are Mr. Trinkle’s gloves,’ says her cousin. ‘ Oh ! ’ says she, 

‘ They are very dirty, and of no use to him, I am sure. I shall 
take ’em away for my girl to clean the stoves with.’ And she put 
’em in her pocket. The girl had used ’em to clean the stoves, 
and, I have no doubt, had left ’em lying on the bed-room mantel- 
piece, or on the drawers, or somewhere ; and her mistress, 
looking round to see that the room was tidy, had caught ’em up 
and put ’em under the pillow where I found ’em. 

“ That’s the story, Sir.” 


II. — THE ARTFUL TOUCH. 

“ One of the most beautiful things that ever was done, per- 
haps,” said Inspector Wield, emphasising the adjective, as pre- 
paring us to expect dexterity or ingenuity rather than strong 


THREE DETECTIVE^' ANECDOTES. 


409 


interest, “ was a move of Sergeant Witchem’s. It was a lovely 
idea ! 

“Witchem and me were down at Epsom one Derby Day, 
waiting at the station for the Swell Mob. As I mentioned, 
when we were talking about these things before, we are ready at 
the station when there’s races, or an Agricultural Show, or a 
Chancellor sworn in for an university, or Jenny Lind, or any 
thing of that sort ; and as the Swell Mob come down, we send 
’em back again by the next train. But some of the Swell Mob, 
on the occasion of this Derby that 1 refer to, so far kiddied us 
as to hire a horse and shay ; start away from London by White- 
chapel, and miles round ; come into Epsom from the opposite 
direction ; and go to work, right and left, on the course, while 
we were waiting for ’em at the Rail. That, however, ain’t the 
point of what i’ln going to tell you. 

“ While Witchem and me were waiting at the station, there 
comes up one Mr. Tatt ; a gentleman formerly in the public 
line, quite an amateur Detective in his way, and very much re- 
spected. ‘ Halloa, Charley Wield,’ he says. ‘ What are you 
doing here ? On the look out for some of your old friends ? 
‘Yes, the old move, Mr. Tatt.’ ‘Come along,’ he says, ‘ you 
and VV^itchem, and have a glass of sherry.’ ‘We can’t stir from 
the place,’ says 1, ‘till the next train comes in ; but after that, 
we will with pleasure.’ Mr. Tatt waits, and the train comes in, 
and then Witchem and me go off with him to the Hotel. Mr. 
Tatt he’s got up quite regardless of expense, for the occasion ; 
and in his shirt-front there’s a beautiful diamond prop, cost 
him fifteen or twenty pound — a very handsome pin indeed. 
We drink our sherry at the bar, and have our three or four 
glasses, when Witchem cries suddenly, ‘ Look out, Mr. Wield ! 
stand fast!’ and a dash is made into the place by the swell 
mob — four of ’em — that have come down as I tell you, and 
in a moment Mr. Tatt’s prop is gone 1 Witchem, he cuts ’em 
off at the door, 1 lay about me as hard as I can, Mr. Tatt 
shows fight like a good ’un, and there we are, all down together, 
heads and heels, knocking about on the floor of the bar — per- 
haps you never see such a scene of confusion ! However, we 
stick to our men (Mr. Tatt being as good as any officer), and 
we take ’em all, and carry ’em off to the station. The station’s 
full of people, who have been took on the course ; and it’s a 
precious piece of work to get ’em secured. However, we do it 
at last, and we search ’em ; but nothing’s found upon ’em, and 
they’re locked up ; and a pretty state of heat we are in by that 
time, I assure you ! 

18 


410 


THREE DETECT/FE^’ ANECDOTES. 


‘‘ I was very blank over it myself, to think that the prof) had 
been passed away ; and I said to Witcheni, when we had set 
’em to rights, and were cooling ourselves along with Mr. Tatt, 
‘We don’t take much hy this move, anyway, for nothing’s found 
upon ’em, and it’s only the braggadocia* after all.’ ‘What do 
you mean, Mr. Wield,’ says Witchem. ‘ Here’s the diamond 
pin ! ’ and in the palm of his hand there it was, safe and sound ! 
‘Why, in the name of wonder,’ says me and Mr. Tatt, in aston- 
ishment, ‘ how did you come by that ? ’ ‘ I’ll tell you how I 

come by it,’ says he. ‘ I saw which of ’em took it ; and when 
we were all down on the floor together, knocking about, I just 
gave him a little touch on the back of his hand, as I knew his 
pal would ; and he thought it was his pal; and gave it me ! ’ 
It was beautiful, beau-ti-ful ! 

“ Even that was hardly the best of the case, for that chap 
was tried at the Quarter Sessions at Guildford. You know 
what Quarter Sessions are, sir. Well, if you’ll believe me, while 
them slow justices were looking over the Acts of Parliament 
to see what they could do to him, I’m blowed if he didn’t cut 
out of the dock before their faces ! He cut out of the dock, 
sir, then and there ; swam across a river ; and got up into a 
tree to dry himself. In the tree he was took — an old woman 
having seen him climb up — and Witchem’ s artful touch trans- 
ported him ! ” 


III. — THE SOFA. 

“ What young men will dp, sometimes, to ruin themselves 
and break their ft-iends’ hearts,” said Sergeant Dornton, “ it’s 
surprising ! I had a case at Saint Blank’s Hospital which was 
of this sort. A bad case, indeed, with a bad end ! 

“ The Secretary, and the House-Surgeon, and the Treasurer, 
of Saint Blank’s Hospital, came to Scotland Yard to give infor- 
mation of numerous robberies having been committed on the 
students. The students could leave nothing in the pockets of 
their great-coats while the great-coats were hanging at the hos- 
pital, but it was almost certain to be stolen. Property of vari- 
ous descriptions was constantly being lost ; and the gentlemen 
were naturally uneasy about it, and anxious, for the credit of the 
institution, that the thief or thieves should be discovered. The 
case was entrusted to me, and I went to the hospital. 


Three months’ imprisonment as reputed thieves. 


THREE DETECTIVE^^ ANECDOTES. 


41I 

f J \ 

“ ‘Now, gentlemen,’ said I, after we bad talked it ovei ; ‘I 
understand this property is usually lost from one room.’ 

Yes, they said. It was. 

j “ ‘ I should wish, if you please,’ said I, ‘ to see the room.’ 

“ It was a good-sized bare room down-stairs, with a few ta- 
bles and forms in it, and a row of pegs, all round, for hats and 
coats. 

“ ‘ Next, gentlemen,’ said I, ‘ do you suspect anybody ? ’ 

“ Yes, they said. They did suspect somebody. They were 
sorry to say, they susi)ected one of the porters. 

“‘I should like,’ said I, ‘to have that man pointed out to 
me, and to have a little time to look after him.’ 

“ He was pointed out, and I looked after him, and then I 
went back to the hospital, and said, ‘ Now, gentlemen, it’s not 
the porter. He’s, unfortunately for himself, a little too fond of 
drink, but he’s nothing worse. My suspicion is, that these rob- 
beries are committed by one of the students ; and if you’ll put 
me a sofa into that room where the pegs are — as there’s no 
closet — I think I shall be able to detect the thief. I wish the 
sofa, if you please, to be covered with chintz, or something cf 
that sort, so that I may lie on my chest, underneath it, without 
being seen.’ 

“ The sofa was provided, and next day at eleven o’clock, be- 
fore any of the students came, I went there, with those gentle- 
men, to get underneath it. It turned out to be one of those old- 
fashioned sofas with a great cross-beam at the bottom, that 
would have brokened my back in no time if I could ever have 
got below it. We had quite a job to break all this away in the 
time ; however, I fell to work, and they fell to work, and we 
broke it out, and made a clear place for me. I got under the 
sofa, lay down on my chest, took out my knife, and made a con- 
venient hole in the chintz to look though. It was then settled 
between me and the gentlemen that when the students were all 
I up in the wards, one of the gentlemen should come in, and hang 
up a great-coat on one of the pegs. And that great-coat should 
have, in one of the pockets, a pocket-book containing marked 
: money. 

“After I had been there some time, the students began to 
! drop into the room, by ones, and twos, and threes, and to talk 
‘ about all sorts of things, little thinking there was any body un- 
' der the sofa — and then to go up-stairs. At last there came in 
I one who remained until lie was alone in the room by himself. 

I A tallish, good looking young man of one or two and twenty, 

: with a light whisker. He went to a particular hat-peg, took otf 


4T2 THREE DETECT/FE^’ ANECDOTES. 

a good hat that was hanging there, tried it on, hung his own hat 
in its place, and hung that hat on another peg, nearly oppositef 
to me. I then felt quite certain that he was the thief, and} 
would come back by-and-bye. : 

‘'When they were all up-stairs, the gentleman came in with, 
the great-coat. _ I showed hun where to hang it, so that I might 
have a good view of it ; and he went away ; and I lay under^ 
the sofa on my chest, for a couple of hours or so, waiting. J 
“At last, the same young man came down. He walked; 
across the room, whistling— stoi)ped and listened— took another! 
walk and whistled — stopped again, and listened — then began^ 
to go regularly round the pegs, feeling in the pockets of all the' 
coats. When he came to the great-coat, and felt the pocket-' 
book, he was so eager and so hurried that he broke the strap in 
tearing it open. As he began to put the money in his pocket,' 

I crawled out from under the sofa, and his eyes met mine. 

“ My face, as you may perceive, is brown now, but it was 
pale at that time, my health not being good ; and looked as 
long as a horse’s. Besides which, there was a great draught of 
air from the door, underneath the sofa, and I had tied a handker-' 
chief round my head ; so what 1 looked like, altogether, I don’t 
know. He turned blue— literally blue— when he'saw me crawl-’ 
ing out, and I couldn’t feel surprised at it. : 

. “ I am an officer of the Detective Police,’ said I, ‘ and have! 
been lying here, since you first came in this morning. I regret,! 
for the sake of yourself and your friends, that you should have 
done what you have ; but this case is complete. You have the 
pocket-book in your hand and the money upon you • and I 
must take you into custody ! ’ ’ ' 

“It was impossible to make out any case in his behalf, and 
on his^ trial he pleaded guilty. How or when he got the means 
I don’t know ; but while he was awaiting his sentence he 
poisoned himself in Newgate.” ' 

^ We inquired of this officer, on the conclusion of the forego-' 
mg anecdote, whether the time appeared long, or short, whenj 
he lay in that constrained position under the sofa ? I 

“ VVhy, you see, sir,” he replied, “if he hadn’t come in, the! 
first time, and I had not been quite sure he was the thief, andS 
would return, the time would have seemed long. But, as itM 
was, I being dead certain of my man, the time seemed prettv l 
short.’ ‘ ^ B 


I 



A Detective’s Story — “The Sofa.” 


[Pa-e 412.] 










413 


ON DUTY 'WITH INSPECTOR FIELD. 


ON DUTY WITH INSPECTOR FIELD. 

OW goes the night ? Saint Giles’s clock is striking 
nine. The weather is dull and wet, and the long lines 
of street lamps are blurred, as if we saw them through 
tears. A damp wind blows and rakes the pieman’s 
fire out, when he opens the door of his little furnace, carrying 
away an eddy of sparks. 

Saint Giles’s clock strikes nine. We are punctual. Where 
is Inspector Field? Assistant Commissioner of Police is al- 
ready here, enwrapped in oil-skin cloak, and standing in the 
shadow of Saint Giles’s steeple. Detective Sergeant, weary of 
speaking French all day to foreigners unpacking at the Great 
Exhibition, is already here. Where is Inspector Field? 

Inspector Field is, to-night, the guardian genius of the British 
Museum. He is bringing his shrewd eye to bear on every 
corner of its solitary galleries, before he reports “ all right.” 
Suspicious of the Elgin marbles, and not to be done by cat- 
faced Egyptian giants with their hands upon their knees. In- 
spector Field, sagacious, vigilant, lamp in hand, throwing 
monstrous shadows on the walls and ceilings, passes through 
the spacious rooms. If a mummy trembled in an atom of its 
dusty covering. Inspector Field would say, “ Come out of that, 
Tom Green. I know you!” If the smallest “ Gonope ” 
about town were crouching at the bottom of a classic bath. 
Inspector Field would nose him with a finer scent than the 
ogre’s, when adventurous Jack lay trembling in his kitchen 
copper. But all is quiet, and Inspector Field goes warily on, 
making little outward show of attending to anything in par- 
ticular, just lecognising the Ichthyosaurus as a familiar ac- 
quaintance, and wondering, perhaps, how the detectives did it 
in the days before the Flood. 

Will Inspector Field be long about this work ? He may be 
half-an-hoLir longer. He sends his compliments by Police Con- 
stable, and proposes that we meet at St. Giles’s Station House, 
across the road. Good. It were as well to stand by the fire, 
there, as in the shndow of Saint Giles’s steeple. 

Anything doing here to-night ? Not much. We are very 
quiet. A lost boy, extremely calm and small, sitting by the 
fire, whom we now confide to a constable to take home, for the 
child says that if you show him Newgate Street, he can show 
you where he lives — a raving drunken woman in the cells, who 



414 


CN DU'JY IV r Til INSPECTOR FIELD. 


has screeched her voice away, and has hardly power enough left 
to declare, even with the jmssionate help of her feet and arms, 
that she is the daughter of a British officer, and, strike her blind 
and dead, but she’ll write a letter to the Queen ! but who is 
soothed with a drink of M'ater — in another cell, a quiet woman 
with a child at her breast, for begging — in another, her husband 
in a smock-frock with a basket of watercresses — in another, a 
pickpocket — in another, a meek tremulous old pauper man 
who has been out for a holiday, “and has took but a little drop, 
but it has overcome him arter so many months in the house” 
— and that’s all as yet. Presentl)^, a sensation at the Station 
House door. Mr. Field, gentlemen ! 

Inspector bdeld comes in, wiping his forehead, for he is of 
a burly figure, and has come fast from the ores and metals of 
the deep mines of the earth, and from the Parrot Gods of the 
South Sea Islands, and from the birds and the beetles of the 
tro])ics, and from the Arts of Greece and Rome, and from the 
Sculptures of Nineveh, and from the traces of an elder world, 
when these were not. Is Rogers ready? Rogers is ready, 
strapped and great-coated, with a flaming eye in the middle of 
his waist, like a deformed Cyclops. I.ead on, Rogers, to Rats’ 
Castle ! 

How many people may there be in London, who, if we had 
brought them deviously and blindfold, to this street, fifty paces 
from the Station House within call of Saint Giles’s church, 
^yould know it for a not remote part of the city in which their 
lives are passed ? How many, who amidst this compound of 
sickening smells, these heaps of filth, these tumbling houses, 
with all their vile contents, animate, inanimate, slimily over- 
flowing into the black road, would believe that they breathe 
this air ? How much Red Tape may there be, that could look 
round on the faces which now hem us in — for our appearance 
here has caused a rush from all points to a common centre — 
the lowering foreheads, the sallow cheeks, the brutal eyes, the 
matted hair, the infected, the vermin-haunted heaps of rags — 
and say “ I have thought of this. I have not dismissed the 
thing. I have neither blustered it away, nor frozen it away, nor 
tied it up and put away, nor smoothly said pooh, pooh ! to it, 
when it has been shown to me ” ? 

This is not what Rogers wants to know, however. What 
Rogers wants to know, is, whether you will clear the way here, 
some of you, or whether you won’t ; because if you don’t do 
it light on end, he 11 lock you up ! What ! You are there, are 
you. Bob Miles? You haven’t had enough of it yet, haven’t ' 


ON DUTY WITH INSPECTOR FIELD. 


415 


you? You want three months more, do you? Come away 
from that gentleman ! What are you creeping round there 
for? 

“ What am I a doing, thinn, Mr. Rogers ? ” says Bob Miles, 
appearing, villanous, at die end of a lane of light, made by the 
lantern. 

“ I’ll let you know pretty quick, if you don’t hook it. Will 
you hook it ? ” 

• A sycophantic murmur rises from the crowd. “ Hook it. 
Bob, when Mr. Rogers and Mr. Field tells you ! Why don’t 
you hook it, when you are told to ? ” 

The most importunate of the voices strikes familiarly on Mr. 
Roger’s ear. He suddenly turns his lantern on the owner. 

“ What ! You are there, are you, Mister Click ? You hook 
it too — come ? ” 

“What for?” says Mr. Click, discomfited. 

“You hook it, will you!” says Mr. Rogers with stern em- 
phasis. 

Both Click and Miles do “hook it,” without another word, 
or, in plainer English, sneak away. 

“ Close up there, my men I ” says Inspector Field to two 
constables on duty who have followed. “ Keep together, gen- 
tlemen ; we are going down here. Heads ! ” 

Saint Giles’s church strikes half-past ten. We stoop low, and 
creel) down a precipitous flight of steps into a dark close 
cellar. There is a fire. There is a long deal table. There 
are benches. The cellar is full of company, chiefly very young 
men in various conditions of dirt and raggedness. Some are 
eating sui)per. There are no girls or women present. * Wel- 
come to Rats’ Castle, gentlemen, and to this company of noted 
thieves ! 

“Well, my lads! How are you, my lads? What have you 
been doing to-day ? Here’s some company come to see you, 
my lads ! Thei'ds a plate of beefsteak. Sir, for the supper of a 
fine young man ! And there’s a mouth for a steak. Sir ! Why, 
1 should be too i)roud of such a mouth as that, if 1 had it my- 
self ! Stand up and show it, sir ! Take off your cap. There’s 
a fine young man for a nice little party, Sir ! An’t he ? ” 

Inspector Field is the bustling speaker. Inspe:tor Field’s 
eye is the roving eye that searches every corner of the cellar as 
he talks. Inspector Field’s hand is the well-known hand that 
has collared half the people here, and motioned thei. brothers, 
sisters, fathers, mothers, male and female friends, inexorably to 
New South Wales. Yet Inspector Field stands in this den, the 


41 6 ON DUTY WITH INSPECTOR FIELD. 

Sultan of the place. Every thief here, cowers before him, like 
a schoolboy before his schoolmaster. All watch him, all answer 
when addressed, all laugh at his jokes, all seek to propitiate 
him. This cellar-company alone — to say nothing of the crowd 
surrounding the entrance from the street above, and making the 
steps shine with eyes — is strong enough to murder us all, and 
willing enough to do it; but, let Inspector Field have a mind 
to pick out one thief here, and take him ; let him produce that 
ghostly truncheon from his pocket, and say, with his business- 
air, “ My lad, I want you ! ” and all Rats’ Castle shall be stricken 
with paralysis, and not a linger move against him, as he fits the 
handculfs on ! 

Where’s the Earl of Warwick? — Here he is, Mr. P'ield ! 
Here’s the Earl of Warwick, Mr. Field ! — O there you are, my 
Lord. Come foi’ard. There’s a chest. Sir, not to have a 
clean shirt on. An’t it. Take your hat off, my Lord. Why, I 
should be ashamed if I was you — and an Earl, too — to show 
myself to a gentleman with my hat on ! — The Earl of Warwick 
lauglis and uncovers. All the company laugh. One jhckpocket, 
especially, laughs with great enthusiasm. O what a jolly game 
it is, when Mr. Field comes down — and don’t want nobody ! 

So, you are here, too, are you, you tall, grey, soldierly-looking, 
grave man, standing by the lire ? — Yes, Sir. Good evening, 
Mr. Field ! — Let us see. You lived servant to a nobleman 
oncj ? — Yes, Mr. Field. — And what is it you do now; I for- 
geh } — Well, Mr. Field, I job about as well as I can. I left my 
employment on account of delicate health. The family is still 
kind to me. Mr. Wix of Piccadilly is also very kind to me 
when I am hard up. Likewise Mr. Nix of Oxford Street. I 
get a tritie from them occasionally, and rub on as well as I can, 
Mr. Field. Mr. Field’s eye rolls enjoyingly, for this man is a 
notorious begging-letter writer. — Good night, my lads ! — Good 
night, Mr. Field, and thank’ee Sir! 

Clear the street here, half a thousand of you ! Cut it, Mrs. 
Stalker — none of that — we don’t want you ! Rogers of the 
flaming eye, lead on to the tramps’ lodging-house ! 

A dream of baleful faces attends to the door. Now, stand 
back all of you I In the rear Detective Sergeant plants him- 
self, composedly whistling, with his strong right arm across the 
narrow passage. ^ Mrs. Stalker, I am something’d that need not 
be written here, if you won’t get yourself into trouble, in about 
half a minute, if I see that face of yours again 1 

Saint Giles’s church clock, striking eleven, hums through our 
hand from the dilapidated door of a dark outhouse as we open 


ON DUTY WITH INSPECTOR FIELD. 


417 


it, and are stricken back by the pestilent breath that issues from 
within. Rogers to the front with the light, and let us look ! 

Ten, twenty, thirty — who can count them ! Men, women, 
children, for the most part naked, heaped upon the floor like 
maggots in a cheese ! Ho ! In that dark corner yonder ! 
Does any body lie there ? Me Sir, Irish me, a widder, with six 
children. And yonder? Me Sir, Irish me, with me wife and 
eight poor babes. And to the left there ? Me Sir, Irish me, 
along with two more Irish boys as is me friends. And to the 
right there ? Me Sir and the Murphy fam’ly, numbering five 
blessed souls. And what’s this, coiling, now, about my foot ? 
Another Irish me, pitifully in want of shaving, whom I have 
awakened from sleep — and across my other foot lies his wife — 
and by the shoes of Inspector Field lie their three eldest — and 
their three youngest are at present squeezed between the open 
door and the wall. And why is there no one on that little mat 
before the sullen fire? Because O’Donovan, with his wife and 
daughter, is not come in from selling Lucifers ! Nor on the bit 
of sacking in the nearest corner ? Bad luck ! Because that 
Irish family is late to night, a-cadging in the streets ! 

They are all awake now, the children excepted, and most of 
them sit up, to stare. Wheresoever Mr. Rogers turns the flam- 
ing eye, there is- a spectral figure rising, unshrouded, from a 
grave of rags. Who is the landlord here ? — I am, Mr. Field ! 
says a bundle of ribs and parchment against the wall, scratching 
itself. — Will you spend this money fairly, in the morning, to 
buy coffee for ’em all ? — Yes Sir, I will ! — O he’ll do it Sir, he’ll 
do it fair. He’s honest ! cry the spectres. And with thanks 
and Good Night sink into their graves again. 

Thus, we make our New Oxford Streets, and our other new 
streets, never heeding, never asking, where the wretches whom 
we clear out, crowd. With such scenes at our doors, with all the 
plagues of Egypt tied up with bits of cobweb in kennels so 
near our homes, we timorously make our Nuisance Bills and 
Boards of Health, nonentities, and think to keep away the 
Wolves of Crime and Filth, by our electioneering ducking to 
little vestrymen and our gentlemanly handling of Red Tape. 

Intelligence of the coffee money has got abroad. The yard 
is full, and Rogers of the flaming eye is beleaguered with en- 
treaties to show other Lodging Houses. Mine next ! Mine ! 
Mine ! Rogers, military, obdurate, stiff-necked, immovable, re- 
plies not, but leads away ; all falling back before him. Inspec- 
tor Field follows. Detective Sergeant, with his barrier of arm 
across the little passage, deliberately waits to close the proces- 
18 * 


4i8 


ON DUTY WITH INSPECTOR FIELD. 


tion. He sees behind him, without any effort, and exceedingly 
disturbs one individual far in the rear by coolly calling out, “ It 
won’t do Mr. Michael ! ‘Don’t try it !” 

After council holden in the street, we enter other lodging 
houses, public-houses, many lairs and holes ; all noisome and 
offensive ; none so filthy and so crowded as where Irish are. 
In one, The Ethiopian party are expected home presently — 
were in Oxford Street when last heard of — shall be fetched, for 
our delight, within ten minutes. In another, one of the two or 
three Professors who draw Napoleon Buonaparte and a couple 
of mackarel, on the pavement, and then let the work of art out 
to a speculator, is refreshing after his labours. In another, the 
vested interest of the profitable niiisance has been in one family 
for a hundred years, and the landlord drives in comfortably from 
the country to his snug little stew in town. In all. Inspector 
field is received with warmth. Coiners and smashers droop 
before him ; pickpockets defer to him ; the gentle sex (not very 
gentle here) smile upon him. Half-drunken hags check them- 
selves in the midst of pots of beer, or pints of gin, to drink to 
Mr. Field, and pressingly to ask the honour of his finishing the 
draught. One beldame in rusty black has such admiration for 
him, that she runs a whole street’s length to shake him by the 
hand ; tumbling into a heap of mud by the way, and still press- 
ing her attentions when her very form has ceased to be distin- 
guishable through it. Before the power of the law, the power 
of superior sense — for common thieves are fools beside these 
men and the power of a i)eifect mastery of their character, 
the garrisoii of Rats’ Castle and the adjacent Fortresses make 
but a skulking show indeed when reviewed by Inspector P'ield. 

Saint Giles’s clock says it will be midnight in half-an-hour, 
and Inspector Field says we must hurry to the Old Mint in the 
Borough. The cab-driver is low-spirited, and has a solemn 
sense of his responsibility. Now, what’s your fare, my lad — 
O you know, Inspector Field, what’s the good of asking me / 

Say, Parker, strap{:>ed and great-coated, and waiting in dim 
Borough doorway by appointment, to replace the trusty Rogers 
whom we left deep in Saint Giles’s, are you ready? Ready, 
Inspector field, and at a motion of my wrist behold my flam- 
ing eye. 

This narrow street, sir, is the chief part of the Old Mint, full 
of low lodging-houses, as you see by the transparent canvas- 
lamps and blinds, announcing beds for travellers ! But it is 
gieatly changed, friend field, from my former knowledge of it ; 
it IS infinitely quieter and more subdued than when I was here 


419 


- . ON DUTY WITH INSPECTOR FIELD. 

last, some seven years ago ? O yes ! Inspector Haynes, a 
first rate man, is on this station now and plays the Devil with 
them ! 

Well, my lads ! How are you to-night, my lads ! Playing 
cards here, eh? Who wins? — Why, Mr. Field, I, the sulky 
gentleman with the damp fiat side-curls, rubbing my bleared eye 
with the end of my neck-kerchief which is like a dirty ecl-skm, 
am losing just at present, but I suppose 1 must take my pipe 
out of my mouth, and be submissive you — 1 hoj)e 1 see you 
well, Mr. P'ield? — Aye, all right, my lad. Dei)uty, who have 
you got up-stairs? Be pleased to show the rooms ! 

Why Deputy, Inspector Field can’t say. He only knows 
that the man who takes care of the beds and lodgers is always 
called so. Steady, O Deputy, with the flaring candle in the 
blacking bottle, for this is a slushy back-yard, and the wooden 
staircase outside the house creaks and has holes in it. 

Again, in these confined intolerable rooms, burrowed out like 
the holes of rats or the nests of insect- vermin, but fuller of 
intolerable smells, are crowds of sleepers, each on his foul 
truckle-bed coiled up beneath a rug. Halloa here ! Come ! 
Let us see you ! Show your face ! Pilot Parker goes from 
bed to bed and turns their slumbering heads towards us, as a 
salesman might turn sheep. Some wake up with an execration 
and a threat. — What ! who spoke ? O ! If it’s the accursed 
glaring eye that fixes me, go w'here I will, I am helj^less. Here ! 
I sit u[) to be looked at. Is it me you want ? —Not you, lie 
down again ! — and J lie down, with a woeful growl. 

Wherever the turning lane of light becomes stationary for a 
moment, some sleeper appears at the end of it, submits himself 
to be scrutinised, and fades away into the darkness. 

There should be strange dreams here. Deputy. They sleep 
sound enough, says Deputy, taking the candle out of the black- 
ing bottle, snufiing it with his fingers, throwing the snuff into 
the bottle, and corking it up with the candle ; that’s all 1 
know. What is the inscription, Dej)uty, on all the discoloured 
sheets? A precaution against loss of linen. Deputy turns 
down the rug of an unoccupied bed and discloses it. Stop 
Thief ! 

To lie ‘at night, wrapped in the legend of my slinking life ; 
to take the cry that pursues me, waking, to my breast in sleep ; 
to have it staring at me, and clamouring for me, as soon as 
consciousness returns ; to have it for my first-foot on New- 
Year’s day, iny Valentine, my Birthday salute, my Christinas 
greeting, my parting with' the old year. Sto? Thief ! 


420 ON DUTY WITH INSPECTOR FIELD. 

And to know that I must be stopped, come what will. To 
know that I am no match for this individual energy and keen- 
ness, or this organised and steady system ! Come across the 
street, here, and, entering by a little shop, and yard, examine 
these intricate passages and doors, contrived for escape, flapping 
and counter-flapping, like the lids of the conjuror’s boxes. But 
what avail they ? VVho gets in by a nod, and shows their secret 
working to us? Inspector Field. 

Don’t forget the old Farm House, Parker ! Parker is not the 
man to forget it. We are going there, now. It is the old 
Manor-House of these parts, and stood in the country once. 
Then, perhaps, there was something, which was not the beastly 
street, to see from the shattered low fronts of the overhanging 
wooden houses we are passing under — shut up now, pasted 
over with bills about the literature and drama of the Mint, and 
mouldering away. This long paved yard was a paddock or a 
garden once, or a court in front of tire Farm House. Per- 
clpnce, with a dovecot in the centre, and fowls pecking about — ■ 
with fair elm trees, then, where discoloured chimney-stacks and 
gables are now — noisy, then, with rooks which have yielded to 
a different sort of rookery. It’s likelier than not, Inspector 
Field thinks, as we turn into the common kitchen, which is in 
the yard, and many paces from the house. 

Well my lads and lasses, how are you all ! Where’s Blackey, 
who has stood near London Bridge these five-and-twenty years, 
with a painted skin to represent disease ? — here he is, Mr. Field ! 
—How are you, Blackey ?— Jolly, sa ! —Not playing the fiddle 
to-night, Blackey — Not a night, sa ! — a sharp, smiling youth, 
the wit of the kitchen, interposes. He an’t musical to-night, 
sir. ^ I’ve been giving him a moral lecture ; I’ve been a talking 
to him about his latter end, you see. A good many of these 
are my pupils, sir. This here young man (smoothing down the 
hair of one near him, reading a Sunday paper) is a jiupil of 
mine. I’m a teaching of him to read, sir. He’s a promising 
cove, sir. He’s a smith, he is, and gets his living by the swca^ 
of his brow, sir. So do I, myself, sir. This young woman is 
my sister, Mr. Field. She's getting on very well too. I’ve a 
deal trouble with ’em, sir, but I’m richly rewarded, now I see 
’em all a doing so vvell, and growing up so creditable.* That’s a 
great comfort, that is, an’t it, sir ? — In the midst of the kitchen 
(the whole kitchen is in ecstacies with this impromptu “chaff”) 
sits a young, modest, gentle-looking creature, with a beautiful 
child in her lap. She seems to belong to the conii)anv, but is 
so strangely unlike it. She has such a pretty, quiet face and 


ON DUTY WITH INSPECTOR. FIELD. 


421 


voice, and is so proud to hear the child admired — thinks you 
would hardly believe that he is only nine months old ! Is she 
as bad as the re5t, I wonder ? Inspectorial experience does 
not engender a belief contrariwise, but prompts the answer. 
Not a ha’porth of difference ! 

There is a piano going in the old Farm House as we ap])roach. 
It stops. Landlady appears. Has no objections, Mr. Field, 
to gentlemen being brought, but wishes it were at earlier hours, 
the lodgers complaining of ill-conwenience. Inspector Field is 
polite and soothing — knows his woman and the sex. Deputy- 
(a girl in this case) shows the way up a heavy broad old stair- 
case, kept very clean, into clean rooms where many sleepers 
are, and where painted panels of an older time look strangely 
on the truckle beds. The sight of whitewash and the smell of 
soap — two things we seem by this time to have parted from in 
infancy — make the old Farm Flouse a phenomenon, and con- 
nect themselves with the so curiously misplaced picture of the 
pretty mother and child long after we have left it, — long after 
we have left, besides, the neighbouring nook with something of 
a rustic flavour in it yet, where once, beneath a low wooden col- 
onnade still standing as of yore, the eminent Jack Sheppard 
condescended to regale himself, and where, now, two old bache- 
lor brothers in broad hats (who are whisj)ered in the Mint to 
have made a compact long ago that if either should ever marry, 
he must forfeit his share of the joint property) still keep a se- 
quested tavern, and sit o’ nights smoking pipes in the bar, 
among ancient bottles and glasses, as our eyes behold them. 

How goes the night now ? Saint George of Southwark an- 
swers with twelve blows upon his bell. Parker, good night, for 
Williams is already waiting over in the region of Ratcliffe High- 
way, to show tire houses where the sailors dance. 

I should like to know where Inspector Field was born. In 
Ratcliffe Highway, I would have answered with confidence, but 
for his being equally at home wherever we go. He does not 
trouble his head as 1 do, about the river at night. He does not 
care for its creeping, black and silent, on our right there, rush- 
ing through sluice gates, lapping at piles and posts and iron 
rings, hiding strange things in its mud, running away with sui- 
cides and accidentally drowned bodies faster than midnight fun- 
eral should, and acquiring such various experience between its 
cradle and its grave. It has no mystery for hwi. Is there not 
the Thames Police ! 

Accordingly, Williams lead the way. We are a little late, for 
some of the houses are already closing. No matter. You 


422 


ON DUTY WITH INSPECTOR FIELD. 


show us plenty. All the landlords know Inspector Field. 
All pass him, freely and good-humouredly, wheresoever he wants 
to go. So thoroughly are all these houses oiien to him and our 
local guide, that, granting that sailors must be entertained in 
their own way — as I suppose they must, and have a right to be 
— I hardly know how such places could be better regulated. 
Not that I call the com])any very select, or the dancing very 
graceful — even so graceful as that of the German Sugar Bakers, 
whose assembly, by the Minories, we stoi)ped to visit — but 
there is watchful maintenance of order in every house, and 
swift ex[)ulsion where need is. Even in the midst of drunken 
ness, both of the lethargic kind and the lively, there is sharp 
landlord supervision, and pockets are in less j^eril than out of 
doors. These houses show, singularly, how much of the pict- 
uresque and romantic there truly is in the sailor, requiring to 
be especially addressed. All the songs (sung in a hailstorm 
of halfpence, which are pitched at the singer without the least 
tenderness for the time or tune — mostly from great rolls of cop- 
per carried for the pur])ose — and which he occasionally dodges 
like shot as they fly near his head) are of the sentimental sea 
sort. All the rooms are decorated with nautical subjects.’ 
Wrecks, engagements, shii)s on fire, ships ))assing lighthouses on 
iron-bound coasts, ships blowing up, ships going down, ships 
running ashore, men lying out upon the mainyard in a gale of 
wind, sailors and ships in every variety of peril, constitute the 
illustrations of fact. Nothing can be done in the fanciful way, 
without a thumping boy upon a scaly dolphin. 

How goes the night now ? Past one. Black and Green are 
_ waiting in Whitechaj:)el to unveil the mysteries of Wentworth 
Street. Williams, the best of friends must part. Adieu ! 

Are not Black and Green ready at the apjiointed place ? O 
yes ! They glide out of shadow as we stop. ImiJerturbable 
Black opens the cab-door; Imperturbable Green takes a mental 
note of_ the driver. Both Green and Black then open, each 
his flaming eye, and marshal us the way that we are going 

The lodging-house we want, is hidden in a maze of streets 
and courts. It is fast shut. We knock at the door, and stand 
hushed looking up for a light at one or other of the begrimed 
old lattice windows in its ugly front, when another constable 
comes up — supposes that we want “ to see the school.” De- 
tective Sergeant meanwhile has got over a rail, opened a gate, 
dropped down an area, overcome some other little obstacles, 
and tapped at a window. Now returns. The landlord will 
send a deputy immediately. 


ON DUTY WITH INSPECTOR FIELD. 


423 


Deputy is heard to stumble out of bed. Deputy lights a 
caudle, draws back a bolt or two, and appears at the door. 
Deputy is a shivering shirt and trousers by no means clean, a 
yawning face, a shock head much confused externally and inter- 
nally. We want to look for some one. You may go up with 
the light, and take ’em all, if you like, says Deputy, resigning 
it, and sitting down upon a bench in the kitchen with his ten 
fingers sleepily twisting in his hair. 

Halloa there! Now then! Show yourselves. That’ll do. 
It’s not you. Don’t disturb yourself any more ! So on, through'' 
a labyrinth of airless rooms, each man responding, like a wild 
beast, to the keeper who has tamed him, and who goes into his 
cage. What, you haven’t found him, then ? says Deputy, when 
came down. A woman mysteriously sitting up all night in 
the dark by the smouldering ashes of the kitchen fire, says it’s only 
tramps and cadgers here ; it’s gonophs over the way. A man, 
mysteriously walking about the kitchen all night in the dark, 
bids her hold her tongue. We come out. Deputy fastens the 
door and goes to bed again. 

]31ack and Green, you know Bark, lodging-house keeper and 
receiver of stolen goods? — O yes. Inspector Field. — Go to 
Bark’s next. 

Bark sleeps in an inner wooden hutch, near his street-door. 
As we parley on the step with Bark’s Deputy, Bark growls in 
his bed. We enter, and Bark flies out of bed. Bark is a red 
villain and a wrathful, with a sanguine throat that looks very 
much as if it were expressly made for hanging, as he sfretches 
it out, in pale defiance, over the half-door of his hutch. Bark’s 
parts of si)eech are of an awful sort— principally adjectives. I 
won’t, says Bark, have no adjective police and adjective stran- 
gers in my adjective premises ! J won’t, by adjective and sub- 
stantive ! Give me my trousers, and I’ll send the whole adjec- 
tive police to adjective and substantive ! Give me, says Bark, 
my adjective trousers ! I’H l)utan adjective knife in the whole 
bileing of ’em. I’ll punch their adjective heads. I’ll rip up their 
adjective substantives. Give me my adjective trousers ! says 
Bark, and I’ll spile the bileing of ’em ! 

Now, Bark, what’s the use of this? Here is Black aitd 
Green, Detective Sergeant, and Inspector Field. You know 
we will come in. — I know you won’t ! says Bark. Somebody 
give me my adjective trousers ! Bark’s trousers seem diffictilt 
to find. He calls for them, as Hercules might for his club. 
Give me my adjective trousers ! says Bark, and I’ll spile the 
bileing of ’em ! 


424 


ON DUTY WITH INSFECTOR FIELD. 


Inspector r'ield holds that it’s all one whether Bark likes the 
visit or don’t like it. He, Inspector Field, is an Inspector of 
the Detective Police, Detective Sergeant is Detective Sergeant, 
Black and Green are constables in uniform. Don’t you be a 
fool. Bark, or you know it will be the worse for you. — I don’t 
care, says Bark. Give me my adjective trous'^rs ! 

At two o’clock in the morning, we descc into Bark’s low 
kitchen, leaving Bark to foam at the mout. bove, and imper- 
turbable Black and Green to look at liimF ’Bark’s kitchen is 
^crammed full of thieves, holding a coiivcrsazione there by lamp- 
light. It is by far the most dangerous assembly we have seen 
yet. Stimulated by the ravings of Bark, above, their looks are 
sullen, but not a man speaks. We ascend again. Bark has got 
his trousers, and is in a state of madness in the passage .with 
his back against a door that shuts off the upper staircase. We 
observe, in other respects, a ferocious individuality in Bark. 
Instead of “ Stop Thief ! ” on his linen, he prints “Stolen 
FROM Bark’s ! ” 

Now Bark, we are going ui> stairs ! — No, you ain’t ! — You re- 
fuse admission to the Police, do you, Bark ? — Yes, I do ! I re- 
fuse it to all the adjective police and to all the adjective sub- 
stantives. Jf the adjective coves in the kitchen was men, they’d 
come up now, and do for you ! Shut me that there door ! says 
Bark, and suddenly we are enclosed in the passage. They’d 
come up and do for you ! cries Bark, and waits. Not a sound 
in the kitchen ! They’d come up and do for you ! cries Bark 
again, and waits. Not a sound in the kitchen ! We are shut 
up, halfa-dozen of us, in Bark’s house in the innermost recesses 
of the worst part of London, in the dead of the night — the 
house is crammed with notorious robbers and ruffians--and not 
a man stirs. No, Bark. They know the weight of the law, and 
they know Inspector Field and Co. too well. 

We leave bully Bark to subside at leisure out of his passion 
and his trousers, and, I dare say, to be inconveniently reniinded 
of this little brush before long. Black and Green do ordinary 
duty here, and look serious. 

As to White, who waits on Holborn Hill to show the courts 
that are eaten out of Rotten Gray’s Inn Lane, where other 
lodging-houses are, and where (in one blind alley) the Thieves’ 
Kitchen and Seminary for the teaching of the art to children, . 
is, the night has so worn away, being now 

almost at odds with morning, which is which, 
that they are quiet, and no light shines through the chinks in 


' DOWN mm THE TIDE. 


425 


the shutters. As undistinctive Death will come here, one day, 
sleep comes now. The wicked cease from troubling sometimes,, 
even in this life. 


^ 'OWN WITH THE TIDE. 

VERY dark night it was, and bitter cold ; the east 
wind blowing bleak, and bringing with it stinging par- 
ticles from marsh, and moor, and fen — from the Great 
Desert and Old Egypt, may be. Some of the com- 
ponent parts of the sharp-edged vapour that came flying up the 
Thames at London might be mummy-dust, dry atoms from the 
Temple at Jerusalem, camels’ foot-prints, crocodiles’ hatching 
places, loosened grains of expression from the visages of blunt- 
nosed sphynxes, waifs and strays from caravans of turbaned mer- 
chants, vegetation from jungles, frozen snow from the Hima- 
layas. — O ! It was very very dark upon the Thames, and it was 
bitter bitter cold. 

“ And yet, ” said the voice within the great pea-coat at my 
side, “ you’ll have seen a good many rivers too, I dare say ? ” 
‘•Truly,” said I, “when I come to think of it, not a few. 
From the Niagara, downward to the mountain rivers of Italy, 
which are like the national si)irit — very tame, or chafing sud- 
denly and bursting bounds, only to dwindle away again. The 
Moselle, and the Rhine, and the Rhone ; and the Seine, and 
the Saone ; and the St. Lawrence, and Mississippi, and Ohio ; 
and the Tiber, the Po, and the Arno ; and the — ” 

Peacoaf coughing, as if he had had enough of that, I said no 
more. I could have carried the catalogue on to a teazing length, 
though, if I had been in the cruel mind. 

“ And after all,” said he, “ this Ioo’ks so dismal ? ” 

“ So awful,” I returned, “ at night. The Seine at Paris is 
very gloomy too, at such a time, and is probably the scene of 
far more crime and greater wickedness ; but this river looks so 
broad and vast, so murky and silent, seems such an image of 
death in the midst of the great city’s life, that — ” 

That Peacoat coughed again. He could not stand my hold- 
ing forth. 

"We were in a four-oared Thames Police Galley, lying on our 
oars in the deep shadow of Southwark Bridge— under the cor- 
ner arch of the Surrey side — having come down with the tide 
from Vauxhall. We were fain to hold on pretty tight though 



426 


DOWN WITH THE TIDE. 


close in shore, for the river was swollen, and the tide running 
down very strong. VV^e were watching certain water-rats of hu- 
man growth, and lay in the deep shade as quiet as mice ; our 
light hidden and our scraps of conversation carried on in whis- 
])ers. Above us the massive iron girders of the arch were faintly 
visible, and below us its ponderous shadow seemed to sink down 
to the bottom of the stream. 

We had been lying here some half an hour. With our backs 
to the wind, it is true ; but the wind being in a determined tem- 
])er blew straight through us, and would not take the trouble to 
go round. I would have boarded a lireship to get into action, 
and mildly suggested as much to my friend Pea. 

“No doubt,” says ho as patiently as possible; “but shore- 
going tactics wouldn’t do with us. River thieves can always 
get rid of stolen property in a moment by dropping it over- 
board. We want to take them with the property, so we lurk 
about and come out upon ’em sharp. If they see us or hear us 
over it goes.” 

Pea’s wisdom being indisputable, there was nothing for it but 
to sit there and be blown through, for another half hour. The 
water-rats thinking it wise to abscond at the end of that time 
without commission of felony, we shot out, disappointed, with 
the tide. 

“ Glim they look, don’t they ? ” said Pea, seeing me glance 
over my shoulder at the lights upon the bridge, and downward 
at their long crooked reflections in the river. 

“Very,” said 1, “and make one think with a shudder of Sui- 
cides. What a night for a dreadful leap from that parapet ! ” 

“ Aye, but Waterloo’s the favourite bridge for making holes 
in the water from,” returned Pea. “ By the bye — avast pulling 
lads! — would you like to speak to* Waterloo on the subject?” 

My face confessing a surprised desire to have some friendly 
conversation with Waterloo Bridge, and my friend Pea being 
the most obliging of men, we put about, pulled out of the force 
of the stream, and in place of going at great speed with the tide 
began to strive against it, close in shore again. Every colour 
but black seemed to have departed from the world. The air 
was black, the water was black, the barges and hulks were 
black, the piles were black, the buildings were black, the shad- 
ows were only a deeper shade of black upon a black ground. 
Here and there, a coal fire in an iron cresset blazed upon a 
wharf ; but, one knew that it too had been black a little while 
ago, and would be black again soon. Uncomfortable rushes of 
water, suggestive of gurgling and drowning, ghostly rattlings of 


DOWN WITH THE TIDE. 


A2J 

iron chains, dismal clankings of discordant engines, -formed the 
music that accompanied the dip of our oars and their rattling 
in the rullocks. Even the noises had a black sound to me — 
as the trumpet sounded red to the blind man. 

Our dexterous boat’s crew made nothing of the tide, and 
pulled us gallantly up to Waterloo Bridge. Here Pea and I 
disembarked, passed under the black stone archway, and 
climbed the steep stone steps. Within a few feet of their sum- 
mit, Pea presented me to Waterloo (or an eminent toll-taker 
re})resenting that structure), muffled up to the eyes in a thick 
shawl, and amply great-coated and fur-capped. 

Waterloo received us with cordiality, and observed of the 
night that it was ‘‘a Searcher.” He had been originally called 
the Strand Bridge, he informed us, but had received his present 
name at the suggestion of the ])roprietors, when Parliament had 
resolved to vote three hundred thousand pound for the erection 
of a monument in honour of the victory. Parliament took the 
hint (said Waterloo, with the least flavour of misanthroi)y) and 
saved the money. Of course the late Duke of Wellington was 
the first passenger, and of course he paid his penny, and of 
course a noble lord preserved it evermore. The treadle and in- 
dex at the toll house (a most ingenious contrivance for render- 
ing fraud impossible), were invented by Mr. Lethbridge, then 
l)roperty-man at Drury Lane Theatre. 

Was it suicide, we wanted to know about? said Waterloo. 
Ha ! Well, he had seen a good deal of that work, he did assure 
us. He had prevented some. Why, one day a woman, poor- 
ish looking, came in between the hatch, slapped down a penny 
and wanted to go on without the change ! Waterloo suspected 
this, and says to his mate, “ Give an eye to the gate,” and bolt- 
ed after her. She had got to the third seat between the piers, 
and was on the parapet just agoing over, when he caught her 
and gave her in charge. At the police office next morning, she 
said it w'as along of trouble and a bad husband. 

“ Likely enough,” observed Waterloo to Pea and myself, as 
he adjusted his chin in his shawl. “There’s a deal of trouble 
about, you see — and bad husbands too ! ” 

Another time, a young woman at twelve o’clock in the open 
day, got through, darted along ; and, before Waterloo could 
come near her, jumped upon the parapet, and shot herself over 
sideways. Alarm given, watermen put off, lucky escape. — 
Clothes buoyed her up. 

“This is where it is,” said Waterloo. “If people jump off 
straight forwards from the middle of the parapet of the bays 


428 


DOIVN WITH THE TIDE. 


of the bridge, they are seldom killed by drowning, but are 
smashed, poor things; that’s what they \ they dash them- 
selves upon the buttress of the bridge. But, you jump off,” 
said Waterloo to me, putting his forefinger in a button hole of 
my great coat ; “ you jump off from the side of the bay, and you’ll 
tumble, true, into the stream under the arch. What you have 
got to do, is to mind how you jump in ! There was poor Tom 
Steele from Dublin. Didn’t dive ! Bless you, didn’t dive at 
all ! Fell dov/n so flat into the water, that he broke his breast- 
bone, and lived two days ! ” 

I asked Waterloo if there were a favorite side of his bridge 
for this dreadful purpose? He reflected, and thought yes, 
there was. Fie should say the Surrey side. 

Three decent looking men went through one day, soberly 
and quietly, and went on abreast for about a dozen yards : 
v/hen the middle one, he sung out, all of a sudden, “ Here goes. 
Jack ! ” and was over in a minute. 

Body found? Well. Waterloo didn’t rightly recollect about 
that. They were compositors, they were. 

He considered it astonishing how quick people were ! Why 
theie was a cab came up one Boxing-night, with a young woman 
in it, who looked, according to Waterloo’s opinion of her, a lit- 
tle the worse for liquor ; very handsome she was too — very 
handsome. She stopped the cab at the gate, and said she’d pay 
the cabman then : which she did, though there was a little han- 
kering about the fare, because at first she didn’t seem quite to 
know where she wanted to be drove to. However she paid the 
man, and the toll too, and looking Waterloo in the face (he 
thought she knew him, don’t you see !) said, “ I’ll finish it some- 
hovy !”^ Well, the cab went off, leaving Waterloo a little doubt- 
ful in his mind, and while it was going on at full speed the young 
woman jumped out, never fell, hardly s^ggered, ran along the 
bridge pavement a little way, passing several people, and jumped 
over from the second opening. At the inquest it was giv’ in 
evidence that she had been quarrelling at the Hero of Waterloo 
and It was brought in jealousy. (One of the results of Water- 
loo s experience was, that there was a deal of jealousy about.) 

Do we ever get madmen?” said Waterloo, in answer to an 
inquiry of mine. “Well, we do get madmen. Yes, we have 
had one or two : escaped from ’Sylums, I suppose. One hadn’t 
a half[)enny ; and because I wouldn t let him through, he went 
back a little way, stooped down, took a run, and butted at the 
hatch hk-e a ram. He smashed his hat rarely, but his head 
didn t seem no worse— in my opinion on account of his being 


DOWN WITH THE TIDE. ^09 

wrong in it afore. Sometimes people haven’t got a lialfpenny. 
If they are really tired and ]:)oor we give ’em one and let ’em 
through. Other people will leave things — pocket-handkerchiefs 
mostly. I have taken cravats and gloves, pocket-knives, tooth- 
picks, studs, shirt pins, rings (generally from young gents, early 
in the morning), but handkerchiefs is the general thing.” 

“Regular customers?” said Waterloo. “ Lord, yes ! We 
have regular customers. One, such a worn-out used-up old file 
as you can scarcely picter, comes from the Surrey side as regu- 
lar as ten o’clock at night comes ; and goes over, I think, to 
some flash house on the Middlesex side. He comes back, he 
does, as reg’lar as the clock strikes three in the morning, and 
then can hardly drag one of his old legs after the other. He 
always turns down the water-stairs, comes up again, and then 
goes on down the Waterloo Road. He always does the same 
thing, and never varies a minute. Does it every night — even 
Sundays.” 

I asked Waterloo if he had given his mind to the possibility 
of this particular customer going down the water-stairs at three 
o’clock some morning, and never coming up again ? He didn’t 
think that of him, he replied. In fiict, it was Waterloo’s opin- 
ion, founded on his observation of that file, that he know’d a 
trick worth two of it. 

“There’s another queer old customer,” said Waterloo, 
“ comes over, as punctual as the almanack, at eleven o’clock 
on the sixth of January, at eleven o’clock on the fifth of April, 
at eleven o’clock on the sixth of July, at eleven o’clock on the 
tenth of October. Drives a shaggy little rough pony, in a sort 
of a rattle-trap arm-chair sort of a thing. White hair he has, 
and white whiskers, and muffles himself up with all manner of 
shaw'ls. He comes back again the same afternoon, and we 
never see more of him for three months. He is a captain in 
the navy — retired — wery old — wery odd — and served with Lord 
Nelson. He is particular about drawing his pension at Somer- 
set House afore the clock strikes twelve every quarter. I have 
heerd say that he thinks it wouldn’t be according to the Act of 
Parliament, if he didn’t draw it afore twelve.” 

Having related these anecdotes in a natural manner, which 
was the best warranty in the world for their genuine nature, 
our friend Waterloo was sinking deep into his shawl again, as 
having exhausted his communicative powers and taken in 
enough east wind, when my other friend Pea in a moment 
brought him to the surface by asking whether he had not been 
occasionally the subject of assault and battery in the execution 


430 


DOWN WITH THE TIDE. 


of his duty ? Waterloo recovering his spirits, instantly dashed 
into a new branch of his subject. We learnt how “ both these 
teeth” — here he pointed to the places where two front teeth 
were not — were knocked out by an ugly customer who one 
night made a dash at him (VVaterloo) while his (the ugly cus- 
tomer’s) pal and coadjutor made a dash at the toll-taking apron 
where the money-pockets were ; how Waterloo, letting the teeth 
go (to Blazes, he observed indefinitely) grappled with the apron- 
seizer, permitting the ugly one to runaway ; and how he saved 
the bank, and captured his man, and consigned him to fine and 
imprisonment. Also how, on another night, “ a Cove ” laid 
hold of Waterloo, then presiding at the horse gate of his bridge, 
and threw him unceremoniously over his knee, having first cut 
his head open with his whip. How Waterloo “got right,” and 
started after the Cove all down the Waterloo Road, through 
Stamford Street, and round to the foot of Blackfriars Bridge, 
where the Cove “ cut into ” a public house. How Waterloo 
cut in too ; but how an aider and abettor of the Cove’s, who 
happened to be taking a promiscuous drain at the bar stopped 
Waterloo ; and the Cove cut out again, ran across the road 
down Holland Street, and where not, and into a beer shop. 
How Waterloo breaking away from his detainer was close upon 
the Cove’s heels, attended by no end of people who, seeing 
him running with the blood streaming down his face, thought 
something worse was “ up,” and roared Fire ! and Murder ! on 
the hopeful chance of the matter in hand being one or both. 
How the Cove was ignominiously taken, in a shed where he 
had run to hide, and how at the Police Court they at first 
wanted to make a sessions job of it; but eventually Waterloo 
was allowed to be “ spoke to,” and the Cove made it square 
with Waterloo by paying his doctor’s bill (W. was laid itp for 
a week) and giving him “ Three, ten.” Likewise we learnt 
what we had faintly suspected before, that your sporting amateur 
on the Derby day, albeit a captain, can be— “ if he be,” as 
Captain Bobadil observes, “ so generously minded ” — anything 
but a man of honour and a gentleman ; not sufficiently gratifying 
his nice sense of humour by the witty scatterings of flour and 
rotten eggs on obtuse civilians, but requiring the further excite- 
ment of “bilking the toll,” and “pitching into” Waterloo, and 
“ cutting him about the head with his whip ; ” finally being, 
when called upon to answer for the assault, what Waterloo de- 
scribed as “ Minus, ’ or, as I humbly conceived it, not to be 
found. Likewise did Waterloo inform us, in reply to my in- 
quiries, admiringly and deferentially preferred through my friend 


DOWN WITH THE TIDE. 


431 


Pea, that the takings at the Bridge had more than doubled in 
amount, since the reduction of the toll one half. And being 
asked if the aforesaid takings included much bad money, Water- 
loo responded, with a look far deeper than the deepest part of 
the river, he should think not ! — and so retired into his shawl 
for the rest of the night. 

Then did Pea and I once more embark in our four-oared gal- 
ley, and glide swiftly down the river with the tide. And while 
the shrewd East rasped and notched us, as with jagged razors, 
did my friend Pea impart to me confidences of interest relating 
to the Thames Police : we betweenwhiles finding “duty boats ” 
hanging in dark corners under banks, like weeds — our own was 
a “ supervision boat” — and they, as they reported “ all right ! ” 
flashing their hidden light on us, and we flashing ours on them. 
These duty boats had one sitter in each : an Inspector : and 
were rowed “ Ran-dan,” which — for the information of those 
who never graduated, as I was once proud to do, under a fire- 
man-waterman and winner of Kean’s Prize Wherry : who, in 
in the course of his tuition, took hundreds of gallons of rum and 
egg (at my expense) at the various houses of note above and 
below bridge ; not by any means because he liked it, but to 
cure a weakness in his liver, for which the faculty had particu- 
larly recommended it — may be explained as rowed by three men, 
two pulling an oar each, and one a pair of sculls. 

Thus, floating down our black highway, sullenly frowned 
upon by the knitted brows of Blackfriars, Southwark, and Lon- 
don, each in his lowering turn, I was shown by my friend Pea 
that there are, in the Thames Police Force, whose district ex- 
tends from Battersea to Barking Creek, ninety-eight men, eight 
duty boats, and two supervision boats ; and that these go about 
~so silently, and lie in wait in such dark places, and so seem to 
be nowhere, and so may be anywhere, that they have gradually 
become a police of prevention, keeping the river almost clear 
of any great crimes, even while the increased vigilance on shore 
has made it much harder than of yore to live by “ thieving ” in 
the streets. And as to the various kinds of water thieves, said 
my friend Pea, there were the Tier-rangers, who silently 
dropped alongside the tiers of shipping in the Pool, by night, 
and who, going to the companion-head, listened for two snores 
— snore number one, the skipper’s ; snore number two, the 
mate’s — mates and skippers always snoring great guns, and be- 
ing dead sure to be hard at it if they had turned in and were 
asleep. Hearing the double fire, down went the Rangers into 
the skippers’ cabins ; groped for the skippers’ inexpressibles, 


432 DOIVN WITH THE TIDE. 

which it was the custom of those gentlemen to shake off, watch, 
money, braces, boots, and all together, on the floor; and there- 
with made off as silently as might be. Then there were the 
Lumpers, or labourers employed to unload vessels. . They wore 
loose canvas jackets with a broad hem in the bottom, turned 
inside, so as to form a large circular pocket in which they could 
conceal, like clowns in pantomimes, ]:)ackages of surprising 
sizes. A great deal of property was stolen in this manner (Pea 
confided to me) from steamers ; first, because steamers carry a 
larger number of small packages than other ships ; next, be- 
cause of the extreme rapidity with which they are obliged to be 
unladen for their return voyages. The Lumpers dispose of 
their booty easily to marine store dealers, and the only remedy 
to be suggested is that the marine store shops should be 
licensed, and thus brought under the eye of the police as rigidly 
as public-houses. Lumpers also smuggle goods ashore for the 
crews of vessels. The smuggling of tobacco is so considerable, 
that it is well wmrth the while of the sellers of smuggled tobacco 
to use hydraulic presses, to squeeze a single pound into a 
package small enough to be contained in an ordinary pocket. 
Next, said my friend Pea, there were the Truckers — less thieves 
than smugglers, whose business it was to land more considera- 
ble parcels of goods than the Lumpers could manage. They 
sometimes sold articles of grocery, and so forth, to the crews, 
in order to cloak their real calling, and get aboard without sus- 
picion. Many of them had boats of their own, and made 
money. Besides these, there were the Dredgermen, who, under 
pretence of dredging up coals and such like from the bottom of 
the river, hung about barges and other undecked craft, and 
when they saw an opportunity, threw any property they could 
lay their hands on overboard ; in order slyly to dredge it up 
when the vessel was gone. Sometimes, they dexterously used 
their dredges to whip away anything that might lie within reach. 
Some of them were mighty neat at this, and the accomplishment 
was called dry dredging. Then, there was a vast deal of property, 
such as copper nails, sheathing, hard-wood, &c., habitually 
brought away by shipwrights and other workmen from their em- 
ployers’ yards, and disposed of to marine store dealers, many 
of whom escaped detection through hard swearing, and their 
extraordinary artful ways of accounting for the possession of 
stolen property. Likewise, there were special-pleading practi- 
tioners, for whom barges “ drifted away of their own selves-”— 
they having no hand in it, except first cutting them loose, and 
afterwards plundering them — innocents, meaning no harm, who 


DOWN WITH THE TIDE. 


433 

had the misfortune to observe those foundlings wandering about 
the Thames. 

We were now going in and out, with little noise and great 
nicety, among the tiers and shipping, whose many hulls, lying 
close together, rose out of the water like black streets. Here 
and there, a Scotch, an Irish, or a foreign steamer, getting up 
her steam as the tide made, looked, with her great chimney 
and high sides, like a quiet factory among the common build- 
ings. Now, the streets opened into clearer spaces, now con- 
tracted into alleys ; but the tiers were so like houses, in the 
dark, that 1 could almost have believed myself in the narrower 
bye-ways of Venice, Everything was wonderfully still ; for, it 
wante'd full three hours of liood, and nothing seemed awake but 
a dog here and there. 

So we took no Tier-rangers captive, nor any Lumpers, nor 
Truckers, nor Dredgermen, nor other evil-disposed person or 
persons ; but went ashore at Wapping, where the old Thames 
Police office is now a station-house, and where the old Court, 
with its cabin windows looking on the river, is a quaint charge 
room : with nothing worse in it usually than a stuffed cat in a 
glass case, and a portrait, pleasant to behold, of a rare old 
Thames Police officer, Mr. Superintendent Evans, now succeed- 
ed by his son. We looked over the charge books, admirably 
kept, and found the prevention so good, that there were not five 
hundred entries (including drunken and disorderly) in a whole 
year. Then, we looked into the store-room ; where there was 
an oakum smell, and a nautical seasoning of dreadnaught 
clothing, rope yarn, boat hooks, sculls and oars, spare stretchers, 
rudders, pistols, cutlasses, and the like. Then, into the cell, 
aired high up in the wooden wall through an opening like a 
kitchen plate-rack : wherein there was a drunken man, not at 
all warm, and very wishful to know if it were morning yet. 
Then, into a better sort of watch and ward room, where there 
was a squadron of stone bottles drawn up, ready to be filled 
with hot water and applied to any unfortunate creature who 
might be brought in apparently drowned. Finally we shook 
hands with our worthy friend Pea, and ran all the way to Tower 
Hill, under strong Police suspicion occasionally, before we got 
warm. 


19 


434 


A WALK IN A WORKHOUSE. 


A WALK IN A WORKHOUSE. 

N a certain Sunday, I formed one of the congregation 
assembled in the chapel of a large metroi:)olitan Work- 
house. With the exception of the clergyman and 
clerk, and a very few officials, here were none but 
paupers present. The children sat in the galleries ; the women 
in the body of the chapel, and in one of the side aisles ; the 
men in the remaining aisle. The service was decorously per- 
formed, though the sermon might have been n}uch better 
adapted to the comprehension and to the circumstances of the 
hearers. The usual supplications were offered, with more than 
the usual significancy in such a place, for the fatherless children 
and widows, for all sick persons and young children, for all that 
were desolate and oppressed, for the comforting and helping of 
the weak-hearted, for the raising-up of them that had fallen ; 
for all that were in danger, necessity, and tribulation. The 
prayers of the congregation were desired “for several persons 
in the various wards dangerously ill ; ” and others who were 
recovering returned their thanks to Heaven. 

Among this congregation, were some evil-looking young 
women, and beetle-browed young men ; but not many — per- 
haps that kind of characters kept away. Generally, the faces 
(those of ihe children excepted) were depressed and subdued, 
and wanted colour. Aged people were there, in every variety. 
Mumbling, blear-eyed, spectacled, stupid, deaf, lame ; vacantly 
winking in the gleams of sun that now and then crept in through 
the open doors, from the paved yard ; shading their listening 
ears, or blinking eyes with their withered hands ; pouring over 
their books, leering at nothing, going to sleep, crouching and 
drooping in corners. There were weird old women, all skeleton 
within, all bonnet and cloak without, continually wiping their 
eyes with dirty dusters of pocket handkerchiefs ; and there 
were ugly old crones, both male and female, with a ghastly 
kind of contentment upon them which was not at all comfort- 
ing to see. Upon the whole, it was the dragon. Pauperism, in 
a very weak and impotent condition ; toothless, fangless, draw- 
ing his breath heavily enough, and hardly worth chaining up. 

IVhen the service was over, I v/alked with the humane and 
conscientious gentleman whose duty it was to take that walk, 
that Sunday morning, through the little world of poverty en- 
closed within the workhouse walls. It was inhabited by a 



A WALK m A WORKHOUSE. 


435 


population of some fifteen hundred or two thousand paupers, 
ranging from the infant newly born or not yet come into the 
pauper world, to the old man dying on his bed. 

In a room opening from a squalid yard, where a number of 
listless women were lounging to and fro, trying to get warm in 
the ineffectual sunshine of the tardy May morning — in the 
“ Itch Ward,” not to compromise the truth — a woma’n such as 
Hogarth has often drawn, was hurriedly getting on her gown 
before a dusty fire. She was the nurse, or wardswoman, of that 
insalubrious department — herself a paui)er — flabby, raw-boned, 
untidy — unpromising and coarse of aspect as need be. But, 
on being spoken to about the patients whom she had in 
charge, she turned round, with her shabby gown half on, half 
off, and fell a crying with all her might. Not for show, 
not querulously, not in any mawkish sentiment, but in 
the deep grief and affliction of her heart ; turning away her 
dishevelled head : sobbing most bitterly, wringing her hands, 
and letting fall abundance of great tears, that choked her ut- 
terance. What was the matter with the nurse of the itch-ward ? 
Oh, “ the dropped child ” was dead ! Oh, the child that was 
found in the street, and she had brought up ever since, had 
died an hour ago, and see where the little creature lay beneath 
this cloth ! The dear, the pretty dear ! 

The dropped child seemed too small and poor a thing for 
Death to be in earnest with, but Death had taken it ; and al- 
ready its diminutive form was neatly washed, composed, and 
stretched as if in sleep upon a box. I thought I heard a voice 
from Heaven saying, It shall be well for thee, O nurse of the 
itch-ward, when some less gentle pauper does those offices 
to thy cold form, that such as the dropped child are the angels 
who behold my Father’s fac^ ! 

In another room, were several ugly old women crouching, 
witch-like, round a hearth, and chattering and nodding, after the 
manner of the monkeys. “ All well here ? And enough to eat ? ” 
A general chattering and chuckling ; at last an answer from a 
volunteer. “ Oh yes gentleman ! Bless you gentleman ! I.ord 
bless the parish of St. So-and-So ! It feed the hungry. Sir, and 
give drink to the thusty, and it warm them which is cold, so it 
do, and good luck to the parish of St. So-and-So, and thankee 
gentleman ! ” Elsewhere a party of pauper nurses were at 
dinner. “ How yoic get on ?” “ Oh pretty well Sir ! We 

works hard, and we lives hard — like the sodgers !” 

In another room, a kind of purgatory or place of transition, 
six or eight noisy madwomen were gathered together, under the 


43 ^ 


A WALK IN A WORKHOUSE. 


superintendence of one sane attendant. Among them was a 
girl of two or three and twenty, very prettily dressed, of most 
respectable appearance, and good manners, who had been 
brought in from the house where she had lived as domestic ser- 
vant (having, I suppose, no friends), on account of being sub- 
ject to epileptic fits, and requiring to be removed under the 
influence of a very bad one. She was by no means of the same 
stuff, or the same breeding, or the same experience, or in the 
same state of mind, as those by whom ^e was surrounded ; 
and she pathetically complained that the daily association and 
nightly noise made her worse, and was driving her mad — which 
was perfectly evident. The case was noted for enquiry and 
redress, but she said she had already been there for some 
weeks. 

If this girl had stolen her mistress’s watch, I do not hesitate 
to say she would have been infinitely better off. We have come 
to this absurd, this dangerous, this monstrous pass, that the dis- 
honest felon is, in respect of cleanliness, order, diet, and ac- 
commodation, better provided for, and taken care of, than the 
honest pauper. 

And this conveys no special imputation on the workhouse of 
the parish of St. So-and-So, where, on the contrary, I saw many 
things to commend. It was very agreeable, recollecting that 
most infamous and atrocious enormity committed at Tooting — 
an enormity which, a hundred years hence, will still be vividly 
remembered in the bye-ways of English life, and which has 
done more to engender a gloomy discontent and suspicion 
among many thousands of the people than all the Chartist 
leaders could have done in all their lives — to find the pauper 
children in this workhouse looking robust and well, and appar- 
ently the objects of very great caiQ. In the Infant School — a 
large, light, airy room at the top of the building— the little 
creatures, being at dinner, and eating their potatoes heartily, 
were not cowed by the presence of strange visitors, but stretched 
out their small hands to be shaken, with a very pleasant con- 
fidence. And it was comfortable to see two mangey pauper 
rocking-horses rampant in a corner. In the girls’ school, where 
the dinner was also in progress, everything bore a cheerful and 
healthy aspect. The meal was over, in the boys’ school, by 
the time of our arrival here, and the room was not yet quite re- 
arranged ; but the boys were roaming unrestrained about a large 
and airy yard, as any other schoolboys might have done. Some 
of them had been drawing large ships upon the schoolroom 
wall ; and if they had a mast with shrouds and stays set up for 


A IFALK IN A WORKHOUSE. 


437 


practice (as they have in the Middlesex House of Correction), 
it would be so much the better. At present, if a boy should 
feel a strong impulse upon him to learn the art of going aloft, 
he could only gratify it, I presume, as the men and women 
paupers gratify their aspirations after better board and lodging, 
by smashing as many workhouse windows as possible, and being 
promoted to prison. 

In one place, the Newgate of the Workhouse, a company of 
boys and youths were locked up in a yard alone ; their day- 
room being a kind of kennel where the casual poor used for- 
merly to be littered down at night. Divers of them had been 
there some long time. “ Are they never going away ? ” was the 
natural enquiry. “ Most of them are crippled, in some form 
or other,” said the Wardsman, “and not fit for anything.” 
They slunk about, like dispirited wolves or hyaenas ; and made 
a pounce at their food when it was served out, much as those 
animals do. The big-headed idiot shuffling his feet along the 
pavement, in the sunlight outside, was a more agreeable object 
everyway. 

Groves of babies in arms ; groves of mothers and other sick 
women in bed; groves of lunatics; jungles of men in stone- 
paved down-stairs day-rooms, waiting for their dinners ; longer 
and longer groves of old people, in up-stairs Infirmary wards, 
wearing out life, God knows how — this was the scenery through 
which the walk lay, for two hours. In some of these latter 
chambers, there were pictures stuck against the wall, and a 
neat display of crockery and pewter on a kind of sideboard ; 
now and then it was a treat to see a plant or two ; in almost 
every ward there was a cat. 

In all of these Long Walks of aged and infirm, some old peo- 
ple were bed-ridden, and had been for a long time ; some were 
sitting on their beds half-naked ; some dying in their beds ; 
some out of bed, and sitting at a table near the fire. A sullen 
or lethargic indifference to what was asked, a blunted sensibility 
to everything but warmth and food, a moody absence of com- 
plaint as being of no use, a dogged silence and resentful desire 
to be left alone again, I thought were generally apparent. On 
our walking into the midst of one of these dreary perspectives 
of old men, nearly the following little dialogue took place, the 
nurse not being immediately at hand : 

“ All well here ? ” 

No answer. An old man in a Scotch cap sitting among 
others on a form at the table, eating out of a tin porringer, 
pushes back his cap a little to look at us, claps it down on 


438 


A WALK IN A WORKHOUSE. 


his forehead again with the palm of his hand, and goes on eat- 
ing. 

“ All well here ? ” (repeated.) 

No answer. Another old man sitting on his bed, paralyti- 
cally peeling a boiled potato, lifts his head, and stares. 

“ Enough to eat?” 

No answer. Another old man, in bed, turns himself and 
coughs. 

- “ How are you to-day ? ” To the last old man. 

That old man says nothing; but another old man, a tall old 
man of very good address, speaking with perfect correctness, 
comes forward from somewhere, and volunteers an answer, 
d he reply almost always proceeds from a volunteer and not 
from the person looked at or spoken to. 

“We are very old. Sir,” in mild, distinct voice. “We 
can’t expect to be well, most of us.” 

“ Are you comfortable ? ” 

^ “ I have no complaint to make, Sir.” With a half shake of 
his head, a half shrug of his shoulders, and a kind of apologetic 
smile. ° 


“ Enough to eat ? ” 

“ VVhy, Sir, I have but a poor appetite,” with the same air 
as before ; “and yet I get through my allowance very easily ” 

“But,” showing a porringer with a Sunday dinner in it • 

here is a portion of mutton, and three potatoes. You can’t 
starve on that ? ” 

Oh dear no. Sir,” with the same apologetic air “ Not 
starve.” 

“ What do you want ? ” 

“ We have very little bread, Sir. It’s an exceedingly small 
quantity of bread.” ^ 

rhe nurse, who is now rubbing her hands at the questioner’s 
^elbow, interferes with, “It ain’t much raly, Sir. You see they’ve 
only SIX ounces a day, and when they’ve took their breakfast 
there can only be a little left for night. Sir.” ^ 

Another old man, hitherto invisible, rises out of his bed- 
clothes, as out of a grave, and looks on. 

“ You have tea at night?” The questioner is still address- 
ing the well-spoken old man. 

“ Yes, Sir, we have tea at night.” 

withtt morning, to eat 


“Yes, Sir — if we can save any.” 

“And you want more to eat with it ? ” 


A WALK IN A WORKHOUSE. 


439 


“ Yes, Sir.” With a very anxious face. 

The questioner, in the kindness of his heart, appears a little 
discomposed, and changes the subject. 

“ What has become of the old man who used to lie in that 
bed in the corner ? ” 

The nurse don’t remember what old man is referred to. 
There has been such a many old men. The well-spoken old 
man is doubtful. The spectral old man who has come to life 
in bed, says, “ Billy Stevens.” Another old man who has pre- 
viously had his head in the fire-place, pipes out, ' . 

“ Charley Walters.” 

Something like a feeble interest is awakened. I suppose 
Charley Walters had conversation in him. 

“ He’s dead,” says the piping old man. 

Another old man, with one eye screwed up, hastily displaces 
the piping old man, and says : 

“Yes ! Charley Walters died in that bed, and — and — ” 

“ Billy Stevens,” persists the spectral old man. 

“ No, no ! and Johnny Rogers died in that bed, and — and — 
they’re both on ’em dead — and Sam’l Bowyer ; ” this seems 
very extraordinary to him ; “ he went out !” 

With this he subsides, and all the old men (having had quite 
enough of it) subside, and the spectral old man goes into his 
grave again, and takes the shade of Billy Stevens with him. 

As we turn to go out at the door, another previously invisi- 
ble old man, a hoarse old man in a flannel gown, is standing 
there, as if he had just come up through the floor. 

“ I beg your pardon. Sir, could 1 take the liberty of saying a 
word ? ” • _ 

“ Yes ; what is it ? ” 

“ I am greatly better in my health. Sir ; but what I want, to 
get me quite round,” with his hand on his throat, “ is a little 
fresh air, Sir. It has always done my complaint so much good. 
Sir. The regular leave for going out, comes round so seldom, 
that if the gentleman, next Friday, would give me leave to go 
out walking, now and then — for only an hour or so. Sir ! — ” 

Who could wonder, looking through those weary vistas of bed 
and infirmity, that it should do him good to meet with some 
other scenes, and assure himself that there was something else 
bn earth ? Who could help wondering why the old men lived 
on as they did ; what grasp they had on life ; what crumbs of 
interest or occupation they could pick up from its bare board ; 
whether Charley Walters had ever described to them the days 
when he kept company with some old pauper woman in the 


440 


PRINCE BULL: A FAIRY TALE. 


bud, or Billy Stevens ever told them of the time when he was a 
dweller in the far-off foreign land called Home ! 

The morsel of burnt child, lying in another room, so patiently, 
in bed, wrapped in lint, and looking steadfastly at us with his 
bright quiet eyes when we spoke to him kindly, looked as if the 
knowledge of these things, and of all the tender things there 
are to think about, might have been in his mind— as if he 
thought, with ns, that there was a fellow-feeling in the pauper 
nurses which appeared to make them more kind to their charges 
than the race of common nurses in the hospitals — as if he mused 
upon the Future of some older children lying around him in 
the same place, and thought it best, perhaps, all things consid- 
ered, that he should die— as if he knew, without fear, of those 

many coffins, made and unmade, piled up in the store below' 

and of his unknown friend, “the dropped child,” calm upon the 
box-lid covered with a cloth. But there w'as something wistful 
and appealing, too, in his tiny face, as if, in the midst of all the 
hard necessities and incongruities he pondered on, he pleaded, 
in behalf of the helpless and the aged poor, for a little more 
liberty — and a little more bread. 


PRINCE BULL: A FAIRY TALE. 

■ NCE upon a time, and of course it was in the Golden 
Age, and I hoi)e you may know when that was, for I 
am sure I don’t, though I have tried hard to find out, 
there lived in a rich and fertile country, a powerful 
Prince whose name was Bull. He had gone through a great 
deal of fighting, in his time, about all sorts of things, inchidino- 
nothing ; but, had gradually settled down to be a steady, peace^ 
able, good-natured, corpulent, rather sleepy Prince. 

This Puissant Prince was married to a lovely Princess whose 
name was Fair Freedom. She had brought him a large fortune, 
and had borne him an immense number of children, and had 
set them to spinning, and farming, and engineering, and soldier- 
ing, and sailoring, and doctoring, and lawyering, and preaching, 
and all kinds of trades. The coffers of Prince Bull were full of 
treasure, his cellais were crammed with delicious wines from 
all parts of the world, the richest gold and .silver plate that 
ever was seen adorned his sideboards, his sons w'ere strono-, his 
daughters were handsome, and in short you might have^sup- 


PRINCE BULL: A FAIRY TALE. 


441 


posed that if there ever lived upon earth a fortunate and happy 
Prince, the name of that Prince, take him for all in all, was as- 
suredly Prince Pull. 

But, appearances, as we all know, are not always to be 
trusted— for from it ; and if they had led you to this conclusion 
respecting Prince Bull, they would have led you wrong as they 
often have led me. 

For, this good Prince had two sharp thorns in his pillow, two 
hard knobs in his crown, two heavy loads on his mind, two un- 
bridled nightmares in his sleep, two rocks ahead in his course. 
He could not by any means get servants to suit him, and he 
had a tyrannical old godmother whose name was Tape. 

She was a Fairy, this Tape, and was a bright red all over. 
She was disgustingly prim and formal, and could never bend 
herself a hair’s breadth this way or that way, out of her natu- 
rally crooked shape. But, she was very potent in her wicked 
art. She could stop the fastest thing in the world, change the 
strongest thing into’ the weakest, and the most useful into the 
most useless. To do this she had only to put her cold hand up- 
on it, and repeat.her own name. Tape. 'J’hen it withered away. 

At the court of Prince Bull — at least I don’t mean literally at 
his court, because he was a very genteel Prince, and readily 
yielded to his godmother when she always reserved that for his 
hereditary Lords and Ladies — in the dominions of Prince Bull, 
among the great mass of the community who were called in the 
language of that polite country the Mobs and the Snobs, were a 
number of very ingenious men, who were always busy with some 
invention or other, for promoting the prosperity of the Prince’s 
subjects, and augmenting the Prince’s power. But, whenever 
they submitted their models for the Prince’s approval, his god- 
mother stepped forward, laid her hand upon them, and said 
“Tape.” Hence it came to pass, that when any particularly 
good discovery was made, the discoverer usually carried it off to 
some other Prince, in foreign parts, who had no old godmother 
who said Tape. This was not on the whole an advantageous 
state of things for Prince Bull, to the best of my understanding. 

The worst of it was, that Prince Bull had in course of years 
lapsed into such a state of subjection to this unlucky godmother, 
that he never made any serious effort to rid himself of her 
tyranny. I have said this was the worst of it, but there I was 
wrong, because there is a worse consequence still, behind. 
The Prince’s numerous family became so downright sick and 
tired of Tape, that when they should have helped the Prince out 
of the difficulties into which that evil creature led him, they fell 
lO* 


442 


PRINCE BULL: A FAIRY TALE. 


into a dangerous habit of moodily keeping away from him in an 
impassive and indifferent manner, as thougli they had quite for- 
gotten that no harm could happen to the Prince their father, 
without its inevitably affecting themselves. 

Such was the aspect of affairs at the court of Prince Bull, 
when this great Prince found it necessary to go to war with 
Prince Bear. He had been for some time very doubtful of his 
servants, who, besides being indolent and addicted to enriching 
there families at his expense, domineered over him dreadfully ; 
threatening to discharge themselves if they were found the least 
fault with, pretending that they had done a wonderful amount 
of work when they had done nothing, making the most unmean- 
ing speeches that ever were heard in the Prince’s name, and 
uniformly showing themselves to be very inefficient indeed. 
Though, that some of them had excellent characters from pre- 
vious situations is not to be denied. Well ; Prince Bull called 
his servants together, and said to them one and all, “ Send out 
iny army against Prince Bear. Clothe it, arm it, feed it, provide 
it with all necessaries and contingencies, and I will pay the 
piper! Do your duty by my brave troops,” said the Prince, 
“and do it well, and I will pour my treasure out like water, to 
defray the cost. ^ Who ever heard me complain of money well 
laid out ! ” Which indeed he had reason for saying, inasmuch 
as he was well known to be a truly generous and munificent 
Prince. 


When the servants heard those words, they sent out the 
army against Prince Bear, and they set the army tailors to 
work, and the army provision merchants, and the makers of 
guns both great and small, and the gunpowder makers, and the 
makers of ball, shell, and shot ; and they bought up all manner 
of^ stores and ships, without troubling their heads about the 
price, and ai)peared to be so busy that the good Prince rubbed 
his hands, and (using a favourite expression of his), said, “It’s 
all right!” But, while they were thus employed, the Prince’s 
godmother, who was a great favourite with those servants, 
looked in upon them continually all day long, and, whenever 
she popped in her head at the door, said, “How do you do. my 
children.? What are you doing here?” “Official business, 
godmother.” “ Oho ! ” says this wicked Fairy. “—Tape ! ” 
And then the business all went wrong, whatever it was, and the 
servants’ heads became so addled and muddled that they 
thought they were doing wonders. 

Now, this was very bad conduct on the part of the vicious old 
nuisance, and she ouglu to have been strangled, even if she 


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443 


had stopped here ; but, she didn’t stop here, as you shall learn. 
For, a number of the Prince’s subjects, being very fond of the 
Prince’s army who were the bravest of men, assembled together 
and provided all manner of eatables and drinkables, and books 
to read, and clothes to wear, and tobacco to smoke, and candles 
to burn, and nailed them up in great packing-cases, and put 
them aboard a great many ships, to be carried out to that brave 
army in the cold and inclement country where they were fighting 
Prince Bear. Then, up comes this wicked Fairy as the ships 
were weighing anchor, and says, “ How do you do, my chil- 
dren ? What are you doing here ? ” — “ We are going with all 
these comforts to the army, godmother.” — “Oho!” says she. 
“A pleasant voyage, my darlings. — Tape!” And from that 
time forth, those enchanted ships went sailing, against wind and 
tide and rhyme and reason, round and round the world, and 
whenever they touch at any port were ordered off immediately, 
and could never deliver their cargoes anywhere. 

This, again, was very bad conduct on the part of the vicious 
old nuisance, and she ought to have been strangled for it if she 
had done nothing worse ; but, she did something worse still, 
as you shall learn. For, she got astride of an official broom- 
stick, and muttered as a spell these two sentences, “ On Her 
Majesty’s service,” and “ 1 have the honour to be, sir, your most 
obedient servant,” and presently alighted in the cold and inclem- 
ent country where the army of Prince Bull were encamped to 
fight the army of Prince Bear. On the seashore of that coun- 
try, she found piled together, a number of houses for the army 
to live in, and a quantity of provisions for the army to live iij)- 
on, and a quantity of clothes for the army to wear : while, sit- 
ting in the mud gazing at them, were a group of officers as red 
to look at as the wicked old woman herself. So, she said to 
one of them, “ Who are you, my darling, and how do you do ? ” 
— “ I am the Quarter-master General’s Department, god-mother, 
and I am jiretty well.” — Then she said to another, “Who 
are yoti, my darling, and howdojr^i^ do?” — “I am the Com- 
missariat Department, godmother, and I am pretty well.” — 
Then she said to another, “ Who are you, my darling, and 
how do you do ? ” — “ I am the Head of the Medical Depart- 
ment, god-mother, and I am pretty well.” Then, she said to 
some gentlemen scented with lavender, who kept themselves at 
a great distance from the rest, “ And who are you, my pretty 
l>ets, and how do you do ? ” And they answered, “ We-aw-are- 
the-aw-Staff-aw- Department, godmother, and we are very well 
indeed.” — “ 1 am delighted to see you all, my beauties,” say this 


444 


PRINCE BULL: A FAIRY TALE. 


wicked old Fairy, Tape !” Upon that, the houses, clothes,^ 
and provisions, all mouldered away ; and the soldiers who were 
sound, fell sick ; and the soldiers who were sick, died miserably ; 
and the noble army of Prince Bull perished. ^ 

When the dismal news of his great loss was carried to the 
Prince, he suspected his godmother very much indeed ; but, he 
knew that his servants must have kept company with the ma- 
licious beldame, and must have given way to her, and therefore 
he resolved to turn those servants out of their places. So, he 
called to him a Roebuck who had the gift of speech, and he 
said, “ Good Roebuck, tell them they must go.” So, the good 
Roebuck delivered his message, so like a man that you might 
have supposed him to be nothing but a man, and they were 
turned out— but, not without warning, for that they had had along 

And now comes the most extraordinary part of the history of 
this Prince. When he had turned out those servants, of course 
he wanted others. What was his astonishment to find that in 
all his dominions, which contained no less than twenty-seven mil- 
lions of people, there were not above five-and-twenty servants 
altogether ! They were so lofty about it, too, that instead of dis- 
cussing whether they should hire themselves as servants to Prince 
Bull, they turned things topsy-turvy, and considered whether as 
a favour they should hire Prince Bull to be their master ! 
While thef were arguing this point among themselves quite at' 
their leisure, the wicked old red Fairy was incessantly going up 
and down, knocking at the doors of twelve of the oldest of the 
five-and-twenty, who were the oldest inhabitants in all that 
country, and whose united ages amounted to one thousand, say- 
ing, “ Will you hire Prince Bull for your master ?— Will hire 

Prince Bull for your master To which one answered “I 
will if next door will ; ” and another, “ I won’t if over the wav 
does; ” and another, “ I can’t if he, she, or they, might, could, 
would or should.” And all this time Prince Bull’s afiairs were 
going to rack and ruin. 

. At last, Prince Bull in the height of his perplexity assumed a 
thoughtml face, as if he were struck by an entirely new idea 
file wicked old Fairy, seeing this, was at his elbow directly, and 
said,_ How do you do, my Prince, and what are you thinking 
of? — “ I am thinking, godmother,” says he, “ that among all 
the seven-and-twenty millions of my subjects who have never 
been in service, there are men of intellect and business who 
have made me very famous both among my friends and ene- 
mies. —“Aye, tnily?” says the Fairy— “Aye, truly,” says the 


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445 


Prince. — And what then?” says the Fairy. — “Why, then,” 
says he, “ since the regular old class of servants do so ill, are 
so hard to get, and carry it with so high a hand, perha])s I 
might try to make good servants of some of these.” The words 
had no sooner passed his lips than she returned, chucking, “You 
think so, do you ? Indeed, my Prince ? — Tape ! ” Thereup- 
on he directly forgot what he was thinking of, and cried out 
lamentably to the old servants, “ O, do come and hire your 
poor old master ! Pray do ! On any terms ! ” 

And this, for the present, finishes the story of Prince Bull. 
I wish I could wind it up by saying that he lived hapjiy ever 
afterwards, but I cannot in my conscience do so ; for, with Tape 
at his elbow, and his estranged children fatally repelled by her 
from coming near him, I do not, to tell you the plain truth, be- 
lieve in the possibility of such an end to it. 


A PLATED ARTICLE. 

UTTING up for the night in one of the chiefest towns 
of Staffordshire, I find it to be by no means a lively 
town. In fact it is as dull and dead a town as any 
one could desire not to see. It seems as if its whole 
population might be imprisoned in its Railway Station. The 
Refreshment-room at the Station is a vortex of dissipation com- 
pared with the extinct town-inn, the Dodo, in the dull High 
Street. 

Why High Street ? Why not rather Low Street, Flat Street, 
Low-Si)irited Street, Used-up Street? \Vhere are the people 
who belong to the High Street ? Can they all be dispersed 
over the face of the country, seeking the unfortunate Strolling 
Manager who decamped from the mouldy little Theatre last 
week, in the beginning of his season (as his play-bills testify), 
repentantly resolved to bring him back, and feed him and be 
entertained ? Or, can they all be gathered to their fathers in 
the two old churchyards near to the High Street — retirement 
into w'hich churchyards appears to be a mere ceremony, there 
is so very little life outside their confines, and such small dis- 
v'^ernible difference between being buried alive in the town, and 
buried dead in the town tombs ? Over the way, opposite to 
the staring blank bow windows of the Dodo, are a little iron- 
monger’s shop, a little tailor’s shop (with a picture of the Fash- 



446 


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ions in a small window and a bandy-legged baby on the pave- 
ment staring at it) — a watchmaker’s shop, where all the- clocks 
and watches must be stop))ed, I am sure, for they could never 
have the courage to go, with the town in general, and the Dodo 
in particular, looking at them. Shade of Miss Linwood, erst 
of Leicester Square, London, thou art welcome here, and thy 
retreat is fitly chosen ! I myself was one of the last visitors to 
that awful storehouse of thy life’s work, where an anchorite old 
man and woman took m}’’ shilling with a solemn wonder, and 
conducting me to a gloomy sepulchre of needlework dropping 
to pieces with dust and age and shrouded in twilight at high 
noon, and left me there, chilled, frightened, and alone. And 
now, in ghostly letters on all the dead walls of this dead town, 
I read thy honoured name, and find that thy Last Supper, worked 
in Berlin Wool, invites inspection as a powerful excitement. 

Where are the people who are bidden with so much cry to 
this feast of little wool ? Where are they ? AVho are they ? 
They are not the bandy-legged baby studying the fashions in the 
tailor’s window. They are not the two earthy ploughmen 
lounging outside the saddler’s shop, in the stiff square where 
the Town Hall stands, like a brick and mortar private on pa- 
lade. Bhey aie not the landlady of the Dodo in the empty 
bar, whose eye had trouble in it and no welcome, when I asked 
for dinner. They are not the turnkeys of the Town fail, look- 
ing out of the gateway in their uniforms, as if they had locked 
up all the balance (as my American friends would say) of the 
inhabitants, and could now rest a little. They are not the two 
dusty millers in the white mill down by the river, where the 
great water-wheel goes heavily round and round, like the mo- 
notonous days and nights in this forgotten place. Then who 
are they, for there is no one else ? No ; this deponent maketh 
oath and saith that there is no one else, save and excejit the 
waiter at the Dodo, now laying the cloth. I have paced the 
streets, and stared at the houses, and am come back to the 
blank bow window of the Dodo ; and the town clock strikes 
seven, and the reluctant echoes seem to cry, “ Don’t wake 
us !” and the bandy-legged baby has gone home to bed. 

If the Dodo were only a gregarious bird — if it had only some 
confused idea of making a comfortable nest— I could ho])e to 
get through the hours between this and bed-time, without being 
consumed by devouring melancholy. But, the Dodo’s habits 
are all wrong. I t provides me with a trackless desert of sitting- 
room, with a chair for every day in the year, a table for every 
month, and a waste of sideboard where a lonely china vase 


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447 


pines in a corner for its mate long departed, and will never make 
a match with the candlestick in the opposite corner if it live 
till Doomsday. The Dodo has nothing in the larder. Even 
now, I behold the boots returning with my sole in a piece of 
13aper ; and with that portion of my dinner, the Boots, perceiv- 
ing me at the blank bow window, slaps his leg as he comes 
across the road, pretending it is something else. The Dodo ex- 
cludes the outer air. When I mount up to my bed-room, a 
smell of closeness and flue gets lazily up my nose like sleepy 
snuff. The loose little bits of carpet writhe under my tread, 
and take wormy shapes. I don’t know the ridiculous man in 
the looking-glass, beyond having met him once or twice in a dish- 
cover — and I can never shave him to-morrow morning ! The 
Dodo is narrow-minded as to towels ; expects me to wash on a 
freemason’s apron without the trimming : when I ask for soap, 
gives me a stony-hearted something white, with no more lather 
in it than the Elgin marbles. The Dodo has seen better days, 
and possesses interminable stables at the back — silent, grass- 
grown', broken-windowed, horseless. 

This mournful bird can fry a sole, however, which is much. 
Can cook a steak, too, which is more. I wonder where it gets 
its Sherry ! If I were to send my pint of wine to some famous 
chemist to be analyzed, what would it turn out to be made of? 
It tastes of pepper, sugar, bitter almonds, vinegar, warm knives, 
any flat drink, and a little brandy. Would it unman a Spanish 
exile by reminding him of his native land at all ? I think not. 
If there really be any townspeople out of the churchyards, and 
if a caravan of them ever do dine, with a bottle of wine per 
man, in this desert of the Dodo, it must make good for the doc- 
tor next day ! 

Where was the waiter born ? How did he come here ? Has 
he any hope of getting away from here ? Does he ever receive a 
letter, or take a ride upon the railway, or see anything but the 
Dodo ?'• Perhaps he has seen the Berlin Wool. He appears 
to have a silent sorrow on him, and it may be that. He clears 
the table ; draws the dingy curtains of the great bow window, 
which so unwillingly consent to meet, that they must be pinned 
together ; leaves me by the fire with my pint decanter, and a 
little thin funnel-shaped wine-glass, and a plate of pale biscuits 
— in themselves engendering desperation. 

No book, no newspaper ! I left the Arabian Nights in the 
railway carriage, and have nothing to read but Bradshaw, and 
“ that way madness lies'.” Remembering what prisoners and 
shipwrecked mariners have done to exercise their minds in sol- 


448 


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itude, I repeat the multiplication table, the pence table, and the‘ 
shilling table ; which are all the tables I happen to know. 
What if 1 write something ? The Dodo keeps no pens but steel' 
pens ; and those 1 always stick through the paper, and can turn 
to no other account. 

What am I to do ? Even if I could have the bandy-legged 
baby knocked up and brought here, I could offer him nothing 
but sherry, and that would be the death of him. He would 
never hold up his head again if he touched it. I can’t go to 
bed, because I have conceived a mortal hatred for my bedroom ; 
and I can’t go away, because there is no train for my place of 
destination until morning. To burn the biscuits will be but a 
fleeting joy ; still it is a temporary relief, and here they go on 
the fire ! Shall I break the plate ? First let me look at the 
back, and see who made it. Copeland. 

Copeland ! Stop a moment. Was it yesterday I visited 
Copeland’s works, and saw them making plates ? In the con- j 
fusion of travelling about, it might be yesterday or it might be 
yesterday month ; but I think it was yesterday. I appeal to 
the plate. The plate says, decidedly, yesterday. I find the ; 
plate, as I look at it, growing into a companion. 

Don’t you remember (says the plate) how you steamed away, 
yesterday morning, in the bright sun and the east wind, along 
the valley of the sparkling Trent? Don’t you recollect how 
many kilns you flew past, looking like the bowls of gigantic to- 
bacco pipes, cut short off from the stem and turned upside 
down ? And the fires — and the smoke — and the roads made 
with bits of crockery, as if all the plates and dishes in the civ- 
ilised world had been Macadamised, expressly for the laming 
of all the horses ? Of course I do ! 

And don’t you rememl)er (says the plate) how you alighted 
at Stoke— a picturesque heap of houses, kilns, smoke, wharfs, ' 
canals, and river, lying (as was most appropriate) in a basin— 1 
and how, after climbing up the sides of the basin to look at the 
l)rospect, you trundled down again at a walking-match pace, i 
and straight proceeded to my father’s, Copeland’s, where the * 
whole of my family, high and low, rich and poor, are turned out 
upon the world from our nursery and seminary, covering some 
fourteen acres of ground? And don’t you remember what we 
spring from : — heaps of lumps of clay partially prepared and 
cleaned in Devonshire and Dorsetshire, whence said clay prin- 
cipally comes — and hills of flint, without which we should want 
our ringing sound, and should never be musical ? And as to 
the flint, don’t you recollect that it is first burnt in kilns, and 


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449 


is then laid under the four iron feet of a demon slave, subject 
to violent stamping fits, who, when they come on, stamps away 
insanely with his four iron legs, and would crush all the flint in 
the Isle of Thanat to powder, without leaving off? And as to 
the clay, don’t you recollect how it is put into mills or teazers, 
and is sliced, and dug, and cut at, by endless knives, 
clogged and sticky, but persistent — and is pressed out of that 
machine through a square trough, whose form it takes — and is 
cut off in square lumps and thrown into a vat, and there mixed 
with water, and beaten to a pulp by paddle-wheels — and is then 
run into a rough house, all rugged beams and ladders splashed 
with white, — superintended by Grindoff the Miller in his work- 
ing clothes all splashed with white, — where it passes through no 
en(J of machinery-moved sieves all splashed with white, arranged 
in an ascending scale of fineness (some so fine, that three hun- 
dred silk threads cross each other in a single square inch of their 
surface), and all in a violent state of ague with their teeth forever 
chattering, and their bodies forever shivering ? And as to the 
flint again, isn’t it mashed and mollified and troubled and 
soothed, exactly as rags are in a paper-mill, until it is reduced 
to a pap so fine that it contains no atom of “ grit ” perceptible 
to the nicest taste ? And as to the flint and the clay together, are 
they not, after all this, mixed in the proportion of five of clay to 
one of flint, and isn’t the compound — known as “slip” — run 
into oblong troughs, where its superfluous moisture may evap- 
orate ; and finally, isn’t it slapped and banged and beaten and 
patted and kneeded and wedged and knocked about like but- 
ter, until it becomes a beautiful grey dough, ready for the pot- 
ter’s use ? 

In regard of the potter, popularly so called (says the plate), 
you don’t mean to say you have forgotten that a workman 
called a Thrower is the man under whose hand this grey dough 
takes the shapes of the simpler household vessels as quickly as 
the eye can follow ? You don’t mean to say you cannot call 
him up before you, sitting with his attendant woman, at his pot- 
ter’s wheel — a disc about the size of a dinner plate, revolving 
on two drums slowly or quickly as he wills — who made you a 
complete breakfast set for a bachelor, as a good-humored little 
olf-hand joke ? You remember how he took up as much dough 
as he wanted, and throwing it on his wheel, in a moment fash- 
ioned it into a teacup — caught up more clay and made a saucer 
— a larger dab and whirled it intoa teai)Ot — winked at a smaller 
dab and converted it into the lid of the teapot, accurately fit- 
ting by the measurement of his eye alone — coaxed a middle- 


450 


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sized dab for two seconds, broke it, turned in over at the rim, 
and made a milkpot — laughed, and turned out a slop-basin — 
coughed, and provided for the sugar? Neither, I think are 
you oblivious of the newer mode of making various articles, but 
especially basins, according to which improvment a mould re- 
volves instead or a disc ? For you must remember (says the 
plate) how you saw the mould of a little basin spinning round 
and round, and how the workman smoothed and pressed a 
handful of dough upon it, and how with an instrument called a 
profile (a piece of wood, representing the profile of a basin’s 
foot) he cleverly scraped and carved the ring which makes the 
base of any such basin, and then took the basin off the lathe 
like a doughey skull-cap to be dried, and afterwards (in what is 
called a green state) to be put into a second lathe, there to be 
finished and burnished with a steel burnisher ? And as To 
moulding in general (says the plate), it can’t be necessary for 
me to remind you that all ornamental articles, and indeed all 
articles not quite circular, are made in moulds. For you must 
lemember how you saw the vegetable dishes, for example, bein«’ 
made in moulds ; and how the handles of teacups and the spouts 
of teapots, and the feet of tureens, .and so forth, are all made 
in little separate moulds, and are each stuck on to the body cor- 
porate,^ of which it is destined to form a jjart, with a stuff called 
slag , as quickly as you can recollect it. Further, you learnt 
— ^you know you did — in the same visit, how the beautiful sculp- 
tures in the delicate new material called Parian, are all construc- 
ted m moulds; how, into that material, animals bones are 
ground^ up, because the phosphate of lime contained in bones 
niakes it translucent ; how everything is moulded, before going 
into the fire, one-fourth larger than it is intended to come out 
of the fire, because it shrinks in that proportion in the intense 
heat ; how, when a figure shrinks unequally, it is spoiled— emerg- 
ing from the furnace a mis-shapen birth ; a big head and a 
little body, or a little head and a big body, or a Quasimodo 
with long arms and short legs, or a Miss Biffin with neither lec^s 
nor arms worth mentioning. ^ 

And as to the Kilns, in which the firing takes place, and in 
which some of the more precious articles are burnt repeatedly, 
in various stages of their process towards completion, — as to 
the Kilns (says the plate, warming with the recollection), if you 
don't remember them with a horrible interest, what did you 
ever go to Copeland’s for? When you stood inside of one of 
those inverted bowls of a Pre-Adamite tobacco-pipe, looking up 
at the blue sky through the open top far off, as you might have 


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451 


looked up from a well, sunk under the centre of the pavement 
of the Pantheon at Rome, had you the least idea where you 
were ? And when you found yourself surrounded, in that dome- 
shaped cavern, by innumerable columns of an unearthly order 
of architecture, supporting nothing, and squeezed close together 
as if a Pre-Adamite Samson had taken a vast Hall in his arms 
and crushed it into the smallest possible space, had you the 
least idea what they were ? No (says the plate), of course not ! 
And when you found that each of those pillars was a pile of in- 
geniously made vessels of coarse clay — called Saggers — looking, 
when separate, like raised-pies for the mighty Giant Blunder- 
bore, and now all full of various articles of pottery ranged in 
them in baking order, the bottom of each vessel serving for the 
cover of the one below, and the whole Kiln rapidly filling with 
these, tier upon tier, until the last workman should have barely 
room to crawl out, before the closing of the jagged aperture in 
the wall and the kindling of the gradual fire ; did you not stand 
amazed to think that all the year round these dread chambers 
are heating, white hot — and cooling — and filling — and emptying 
■ — and being bricked up — and broken open — humanly speaking, 
for ever and ever ? To be sure you did ! And standing in 
one of those Kilns nearly full, and seeing a free crow shoot 
across the aperture a-top, and learning how the fire would wax 
hotter and hotter by slow degrees, and would cool similarly 
through a space of from forty to sixty hours, did no remem- 
brance of the da)^s when human clay was burnt oppress you ? 
Yes, I think so ! I suspect that some fancy of a fiery haze and 
a shortening breath, and a growing heat, and a gasping prayer ; 
and a figure in black interposing between you and the sky (as 
figures in black are very apt to do), and looking down, before it 
grew too hot to look and live, upon the Heretic in his edifying 
agony — I say 1 suspect (says the plate) that some such fancy was 
pretty strong upon you when- you went out into the air, and 
blessed God for the bright spring day and the degenerate times ! 

After that, I needn’t remind you what a relief it was to see the 
simplest process of ornamenting this “ biscuit ” (as it is called 
when baked) with brown circles and blue trees — converting it 
into the common crockery-ware that is exported to Africa, and 
used in cottages at home. For (says the plate) I am well per- 
suaded that you bear in mind how those particular jugs and 
mugs were once more set upon a lathe and put in motion ; and 
how a man blew the brown color(having a strong natural affinity 
with the material^ in that condition) on them from a blow-pipe 
as they twirled ; and how his daughter, with a common brush, 


452 


A PLATED ARTICLE. 


dropped blotches of blue upon them in the right places ; and 
how, tilting the blotches upside down, she made them run into 
rude images of trees, and there an end. 

And didn’t you see (says the plate) planted upon my own 
brother that astounding blue willow, with knobbed and gnarled 
trunk, and foliage of blue ostrich feathers, which gives our family 
the title of “willow pattern ? ” And didn’t you observe, trans- 
ferred upon him at the same time, that blue bridge which spans 
nothing, growing out from the roots of the willow; and the three 
blue Chinese going over it into a blue temple, which has a fine 
blue crop of blue bushes sprouting out of the roof; and a blue 
boat sailing above them, the mast of which is burglariously stick- 
ing itself into the foundations of a blue villa, suspended sky-high, 
surmounted by a lump of blue rock, sky-higher, and a coui)le 
ofbilling blue birds, sky-highest— together with the rest of that 
amusing blue landscape, which has, in deference to our revered 
ancestors of the Cerulean Empire, and in defiance of every 
known law of perspective, adorned millions of our family ever 
since the days of platters ? Didn’t you inspect the copper-jfiate 
on which my pattern was deeply engraved? Didn’t you per- 
ceive an impression of it taken in cobalt colour at a cylindrical 
in-ess, upon a leaf of thin paper, streaming from a plunge-bath 
of soap and water ? Wasn’t the paper impression daintily spread, 
by a light-fingered damsel (you k7iow you admired her), over 
the surface of the plate, and the back of the paper rubbed prodi- 
giously hard— with a long tight roll of flannel tied up like a round 
of hung beef— without so much as ruffling the paper, wet as it 
was ? Then (says the plate), was not the paper washed away 
with a sponge, and didn’t there appear, set off upon the plate, 
this identical piece ot Pre-Raphaelite blue distemper which you 
now behold ? Not to be denied ! I had seen all this— and 
more. I had been shown, at Copeland’s, patterns of beautiful 
design, in faultless persjiective, which are causing the ugly old 
willow to wither out of public favour; and which, being quite 
as cheap, insinuate good wholesome natural art into the hum- 
blest households. When Mr. a.nd Mrs. Sprat have satisfied their 
material tastes by that equal division of fat and lean which has 
made their menage immortal : and have, after the elegant tra- 
dition, “ licked the platter clean,” they can— thanks to modern 
a.itists m clay cast their intellectual tastes upon excellent de- • 
lineatiuns of natural objects. 

This reflection prompts me to transfer my attention from the 
blue plate to the forlorn but cheerfully painted vase on the 
sideboard. And surely (says the plate) you have not forgotten 


A PLATED ARTICLE. 


453 


•how the outlines of such groups of flowers as you see there, are 
printed, just as I was printed, and are afterwards shaded and 
filled in with metallic colours by woman and girls ? As to the 
aristocracy of our order, made of the finer clay — porcelain peers 
and peeresses ; — the slabs, and ])anels, and table tops, and tazze ; 
the endless nobility and gentry of dessert, breakfast, and tea 
services ; the gemmed perfume bottles, and scarlet and gold 
salvers ; you saw that they were painted by artists, with metallic 
colours laid on with camel-hair pencils, and afterwards burnt in. 

And talking of burning in (says the plate), didn’t you find that 
every subject, from the willow-pattern to the landscape after 
Turner — having been framed upon clay or procelain biscuit — 
has to be glazed ? Of course, you saw the glaze — composed of 
various vitreous materials — laid over every article ; and of course 
you witnessed the close imprisonment of each piece in saggers 
upon the separate system rigidly enforced by means of fine- 
pointed earthenware stilts placed between the articles to pre- 
vent the slightest communication or contact. We had in my time 
— and I suppose it is the same now — fourteen hours firing to 
fix the glaze and to make it run” all over us equally, so as to 
put a good shiny and unscratchable surface upon us. Doubtless 
you observed that one sort of glaze — called printing-body — is 
burnt into the better sort of ware before it is printed. Upon 
this you saw some of the finest steel engravings transfered, to be 
fixed by an after glazing — didn’t you ? Why, of course you 
did ! 

Of course I did. I had seen and enjoyed everything that the 
plate recalled to me, and had beheld with admiration how the 
rotatory motion which keeps this ball of ours in its place in the 
great scheme, with all its busy mites upon it, was necessary 
throughout the process, and could only be dispensed with in the 
fire. So, listening to the plate’s reminders, and musing upon 
them, I got through the evening after all, and went to bed. I 
made but one sleep of it — for which I have no doubt I am also 
indebted to the plate — and left the lonely Dodo in the morning, 
quite at peace with it, before the bandy-legged baby was up. 


454 


OUR HONORABLE FRIEND. 


OUR HONORABLE FRIEND. 

E are delighted to find that he has got in ! Oiir honor- 
'able friend is triumphantly returned to serve in the 
next Parliament. He is the honorable member for 
Verbosity— the best represented place in England. 

Our honorable friend has issued an address of congratulation 
to the Electors, which is worthy of that noble constituency, and 
is a very pretty piece of composition. In electing him, he says, 
they have covered themselves with glory, and England has been 
true to herself. (In his preliminary address he had remarked, 
in a poetical quotation of great rarity, that naught could make 
us rue, if England to herself did prove but true.) 

Our honorable friend delivers a prediction, in the same docu- 
ment, that the feeble minions of a faction will never hold up 
their heads any more ; and that the finger of scorn will point at 
them in their dejected state, through countless ages of time, 
further, that the hireling tools that would destroy the sacred 
bulwarks of our nationality are unworthy of the name of English- 
rnen ; and that so long as the sea shall roll around our ocean- 
girded isle, so long his motto shall be. No Surrender. Certain 
dogged persons of low principles and no intellect, have disputed 
whether any body knows who the minions are, or what the 
faction is, or which are the hireling tools and which the sacred 
bulwarks, or what it is that is never to be surrended, and if not, 
why not ? But, our honorable friend, the member for Verbosity 
knows all about it. ^ 

Our honorable friend has sat in several parliaments, and given 
bushels of votes. He is a man of that profundity in the matter 
of vote-giving, that you never know what he means. When he 
seems to be voting pure white he may be in reality voting jet black. 

When he says Yes, it is just as likely as not — or rather more so 

that he means No. This is the statesmanship of our honorable 
friend. It is in this that he differs from mere unparliamentary 
men. You may not know what he meant then, or what he means 
novy ; but our honorable friend knows, and did from the first know 
both what he meant then, and what he means now : and when he 
said he aidn’t mean it then, he did in fact say that he means it now. 
And if you mean to say that you did not then, and do not now, 
know what he did mean then, or does mean now, our honorable 
Inend vvill be glad to receive an explicit declaration from you 



OUR HONORABLE FRIEND. 


455 

whether you are prepared to destroy the sacred bulwarks of our 
nationality. 

Our honorable friend, the member for Verbosity, has this 
'■great attribute, that he always means something, and always 
means the same thing. When he came down to that House 
and mournfully boasted in his place, as an individual member of 
the assembled Commons of this great and happy country, that 
he could lay his hand upon his heart, and solemnly declare that 
no consideration on earth should induce him, at any time or 
under any circumstances, to go as far north as Berwick-upon- 
Tweed; and when he nevertheless, next year, did go to Ber- 
wick-upon-Tweed, and even beyond it, to Edinburgh ; he had 
one single meaning, one and indivisible. And God forbid (our 
honorable friend says) that he should waste another argument 
upon the man who professes that he cannot understand it ! “I 
do NOT, gentlemen,” said our honorable friend, with indignant 
emphasis and amid great cheering, on one such public occasion. 
“ 1 do NOT, gentlemen, I am free to confess, envy the feelings 
of that man whose mind is so constituted as that he can hold 
such language to me, and yet lay his head upon his pillow, claim- 
ing to be a native of that land. 

Whose march is o’er the mountain-wave, 

Whose home is on the deep ! 

(Vehement cheering, and man expelled.) 

When our honorable friend issued his preliminary address to 
the constituent body of Verbosity on the occasion of one par- 
ticular glorious triumph, it was supposed by some of his enemies, 
that even he would be placed in a situation of difficulty by the 
following compartaively trifling conjunction of circumstances. 
The dozen noblemen and gentlemen whom our honorable 
friend supported, had “ come in,” expressly to do a certain 
thing. Now, four of the dozen said, at a certain place, that 
they didn’t mean to do that thing, and had never meant to do it ; 
another four of the dozen said, at another certain place, that 
they did mean to do that thing, and had always meant to do it ; 
two of the remaining four said, at two other certain places, 
that they meant to do half of that thing (but diftered about 
which half), and to do a variety of nameless wonders instead of 
the other half; and one of the remaining two declared that the 
thing itself was dead and buried, while the other as strenuously 
protested that it was alive and kicking. It was admitted that 
the parliamentary genius of our honorable friend would be quite 
able to reconcile such small discrepancies as these ; but, there 


OUR HONORABLE FRIEND. 


45 <^ 

remained the additional difficulty that each of the twelve made 
entirely different statements at different places, and that all the 
twelve called everything visible and invisible, sacred and pro- 
fane, to witness, that they were a perfectly impregnable phalanx 
of unanimity. This, it was apprehended, would be a stumbling- 
block to our honorable friend. 

The difficulty came before our honorable friend, in this way. 
He went down to Verbosity to meet his free and independent 
constituents, and to render an account (as he informed them in 
the local papers) of the trust they had confided to his hands — 
that trust which it was one of the proudest privileges of an Eng- 
lishman to possess — that trust which it was the proudest privi- 
lege of an Englishman to hold. It may be mentioned as a 
proof of the great general interest attaching to the contest, that 
a Lunatic whom nobody employed or knew, went down to Ver- 
bosity with several thousand pounds in gold, determined to give 
the whole away — which he actually did ; and that all the pub- 
licans opened their houses for nothing. Likewise, several fight- 
ing men, and a patriotic group of burglars sportively armed 
with life-preservers, proceeded (in barouches and very drunk) 
to the scene of action at their own expense ; these children of 
nature having conceived a warm attachment to our honorable 
friend, and intending, in their artless manner, to testify it by 
knocking the voters in the opposite interest on the head. 

Our honorable friend being come into the presence of his 
constituents, and having professed with great suavity that he 
was delighted to see his good friend Tipkisson there, in his 
working dress — his good friend Tipkisson being an inveterate 
saddler, who always opposes him, and for whom he has a mor- 
tal hatred — made them a brisk, ginger-beery sort of speech, in 
which he showed them how the dozen noblemen and gentlemen 
had (in exactly ten days from their coming in) exercised a sur- 
prisingly beneficial effect on the whole financial condition of 
Europe, had altered the state of the exports and imports for 
the current half-year, had prevented the drain of gold, had made 
all that matter right about the glut of the raw material, and had 
restored all sorts of balances with which the superseded noble- 
men and gentlemen had played the deuce — and all this, with 
wheat at so much a quarter, gold at so much an ounce, and the 
Bank of England discounting good bills at so much per cent. ! 
He might be asked, he observed in a peroration of great power, 
what were his principles ? His principles were what they al- 
ways had been. His principles w^ere written in the countenances 
of the lion and unicorn ; were stamped indelibly upon the royal 


OUR HONORABLE FRIEND. 


457 


shield which those grand animals supported, and upon the free 
words of fire which that shield Kore. His principles were, Bri- 
tannia and her sea-king trident ! His principles, were, commer- 
cial prosperity co-existently with perfect and profound agri- 
cultural contentment ; but short of this he would never stop. 
His principles were, these, — with the addition of his colours nailed 
to the mast, every man’s heart in the right place, every man’s 
eye open, every man’s hand ready, every man’s mind on the 
alert. His principles were these, concurrently with a general 
revison of something — speaking generally — and a possible re- 
adjustment of something else, not to be mentioned more partic- 
ularly. His principles, to sum up all in a word were. Hearths 
and Altars, Labour. and Capital, Crown and Sceptre, Elephant 
and Castle. And now, if his good friend Tipkisson required any 
further explanation from him he (our honorable friend) was 
there, willing and ready to give it. 

Tipkisson, who all this time had stood conspicuous in the 
crowd, with his arms folded and his eyes intently fastened on 
our honorable friend : Tipkisson, who throughout our honor- 
able friend’s address had not relaxed a muscle of his visage, but 
had stood there, wholly unaffected by the torrent of eloquence : 
an object of contempt and scorn to mankind (by which we 
mean, of course, to the supporters of our honorable friend) ; 
Tipkisson now Said that he was a plain man (Cries of “You 
are indeed ! ”), and that what he wanted to know was, what our 
honorable friend and the dozen noblemen and gentlemen were 
driving at ? 

Our honorable friend immediately replied, “At the illimitable 
perspective.” 

It was considered by the whole assembly that this happy 
statement of our honorable friend’s political views ought, im- 
mediately, to have settled Tipkisson’ s business and covered 
him with confusion \ but, that implacable person, regardless of 
the execrations that were heaped upon him from all sides (by 
which we mean, of course, from our honorable friend’s side), 
persisted in retaining an unmoved countenance, and obstinately 
retorted that if our honorable friend meant that, he washed to 
know what that meant } 

It was in repelling this most objectionable and indecent op- 
position, that our honorable friend displayed his highest quali- 
fications for the representation of Verbosity. His warmest sup- 
porters present, and those who were best acquainted with his 
generalship, supposed that the moment was come when he 
would fall back upon the sacred bulwarks of our nationality. 

20 


OUR HONORABLE FRIEND. 


458 

No such thing. He replied thus : “ My good friend Tipkisson, 
gentlemen, wishes to know what I mean when he asks me what 
we are driving at, and when I candidly tell him, at the illimit- 
able perspective. He wishes (if I understand him) to know 
what I mean ? ” “ I do ! ” says Tipkisson, amid cries of 
“ Shame ” and “ Down with him.” “ Gentlemen,” says our hon- 
orable friend, “I will indulge my good friend Tipkisson, by tell- 
ing him, both what I mean and what I don’t mean. (Cheers 
and cries of “ Give it him ! ”) Be it known to him, then, and to 
all whom it may concern, that I do mean altars, hearths, and 
homes, and that I don’t mean mosques and Mohammedanism ! ” 
The effect of this home-trust was terrific. Tipkisson (who is a 
Baptist) was hooted down and hustled out, and has ever since 
been regarded as a Turkish Renegade who contemplates an 
early pilgrimage to Mecca. Nor was he the only discomfited 
man. The charge, while it stuck to him, was magically trans- 
ferred to our honorable friend’s opponent, who was represented 
in an immense variety of placards as a firm believer in Ma- 
homet ; and the men ojf Verbosity were asked to choose between 
our honorable friend and the Bible, and our honorable friend’s 
opponent and the Koran. They decided for our honorable 
friend, and rallied round the illimitable perspective. 

It has been claimed for our honourable friend, with much 
appearance of reason, that he was the first to bend sacred mat- 
ters to electioneering tactics. However this may be, the fine 
precedent was undoubtedly set in a Verbosity election ; and it 
is certain that our honourable friend (who was a disciple 
of Brahma in his youth, and was a Buddhist when he had the 
honour of travelling with him a few years ago,) always professes 
in public more anxiety than the whole Bench of Bishops, re- 
garding the theological and doxological opinions of every man, 
woman, and child, in the United Kingdom. 

As we began by saying that our honourable friend has got in 
again at this last election, and that we are delighted to find that 
he has got in, so we will conclude. Our honourable friend 
cannot come in for Verbosity too often. It is a good sign; it 
is a great example. It is to men like our honourable friend, 
and to contests like those from which he comes triumphant, that 
we are mainly indebted for that ready interest in politics, that 
fresh enthusiasm in the discharge of the duties of citizenship, 
that ardent desire to rush to the poll, at present so manifest 
throughout England. When the contest lies (as it sometimes 
does) between two such men as our honourable friend, it stimu- 


OUR SCHOOL. 


459 

lates the finest emotions of our nature, and awakens the highest 
admiration of which our heads and hearts are capable. 

It is not too much to predict that our honourable friend will 
be always at his post in the ensuing session. Whatever the 
question be, or whatever the form of its discussion ; address to 
the crown, election-petition, expenditure of the public money, 
extension of the public suffrage, education, crime; in the 
whole house, in committee of the whole house, in select com- 
mittee ; in every parliamentary discussion of every subject, 
everywhere : the Honourable Member for Verbosity will most 
certainly be found. 


OUR SCHOOL. 

H e went to look at it, only this last Midsummer, and 
found that the Railway had cut it up root and branch. 
A great trunk-line had swallowed the play-ground, 
~~ sliced away the schoolroom, and pared off the corner 
of the house : which, thus curtailed of its proportions, presented 
itself, in a green stage of stucco, profilewise towards the road, 
like a forlorn flat-iron without a handle, standing on end. 

It seems as if our schools were doomed to be the sport of 
change. We have faint recollections of a Preparatory Day- 
School, which we have sought in vain, and which must have 
been pulled down to make a new street, ages ago. We have 
dim impressions, scarcely amounting to a belief, that it was over 
a dyer’s shop. We know that you went up steps to it ; that you 
frequently grazed your ’knees in doing so ; that you generally 
got your leg over the scraper, in tiying to scrape the mud off a 
very unsteady little shoe. The mistress of the Establishment 
holds no place in our memory ; but, rampant on one eternal 
door-mat, in an eternal entry long and narrow, is a puffy pug- 
dog, with a personal animosity towards us, who triumphs over 
Time. The bark of that baleful Pug, a certain radiating way 
he had of snapping at our undefended legs,, the ghastly grinning 
of his moist black muzzle and white teeth, and the insolence of 
his crisp tail curled like a pastoral crook, all live and flourish. 
From an otherwise unaccountable association of him with a 
fiddle, we conclude that he was of French extraction, and his 
name Fidele. He belonged to some female, chiefly inhabiting a 
back-parlour, whose life appears to us to have been consumed 
in sniffing, and in wearing a brown beaver bonnet. For her, he 



OUR SCHOOL. 


^6Q 

would sit up and balance cake upon his nose, and not eat it 
until twenty had been counted. To the best of our belief we 
were once called in to witness this performance ; when, unable, 
even in his milder moments, to endure our presence, he instantly 
made at us, cake and all. 

Why a s'bmething in mourning, called “ Miss Frost,” should 
still connect itself with our preparatory school, we are unable 
to say. We retain no impression of the beauty of Miss P'rost 
— if she were beautiful ; or of the mental fascinations of Miss 
Prost — if she were accomplished ; yet her name and her black 
dress hold an enduring place in our remembrance. An equally 
impersonal boy, whose name has long since shaped itself unal- 
terably into “ Master Mawls,” is not to be dislodged from our 
brain. Retaining no vindictive feeling towards Mawls — no 
feeling whatever, indeed — we infer that neither he nor we can 
have loved Miss Frost. Our first inpression of Death and 
Burial is associaled with this formless pair. We all three nestled 
awfully in a corner one wintry day, when the wind was blowing ' 
shrill, with Miss P'rost’s pinafore over our heads ; and Miss Frost 
told us in a whisper about somebody being “ screwed down.” 
It is the only distinct recollection we preserve of these impal- 
pable creatures, except a suspicion that the manners of Master 
Mawls were susceptible of much improvement. Generally 
speaking, we may observe that whenever we see a child intently 
occupied with its nose, to the exclusion of all other subjects of 
interest, our mind reverts, in a flash to Master Mawls. 

But, the School that was our School before the Railroad came 
and overthrew it, was quite another sort of place. We were 
old enough to be put into Virgil when we went there, and to 
get Prizes for a variety of polishing on which the rust has long 
accumulated. It was a School of some celebrity in its neigh- 
bourhood — nobody could have said why — and we had the 
honour to attain and hold the eminent position of first boy. 
The master was supposed among us to know nothing, and one 
of the ushers was supposed to know everything. We are 
still inclined to think the first-named supposition perfectly 
correct. 

We have a general idea that its subject had been in the 
leather trade, and had bought us — meaning our school — of 
another proprietor, who was immensely learned. Whether this 
belief had any real foundation, we are not likely ever to know 
now. The only branches of education with which he showed 
the least acquaintance, were, ruling and corporally punishing. 
He was always ruling ciphering-books with a bloated mahogany 


OUR SCHOOL, 


461 

ruler, or smiting the palms of offenders with the same diaboli- 
cal instrument, or viciously drawing a pair of pantaloons tight 
with one of his large hands, and caning the wearer with the 
other. We have no doubt whatever that this occupation was 
the principal solace of his existence. 

A profound respect for money prevaded Our School, which 
was of course, derived from its Chief. We remember an idiotic 
goggled-eyed boy, with a big head and half-crowns without end, 
who suddenly appeared as a parlour-boarder, and was rumoured 
to have come by sea from some mysterious, part of the earth 
where his parents rolled in gold. He was usually called “ Mr.” 
by the Chief, and was said to feed in the parlour on steaks and 
gravy ; likewise to drink currant wine. And he openly stated 
that if rolls and coffee were ever denied him at breakfast, he 
would write home to that unknown part of the globe from which 
he had come, and cause himself to be recalled to the regions of 
gold. He was put into no form or class, but learnt alone, as 
little as he liked — and he liked very little — and there was a 
belief among us that this was because he was too wealthy to be 
“ taken down.” His special treatment, and our vague associa- 
tion of him with the sea, and with storms, and sharks, and Coral 
Reefs occasioned the wildest legends to be circulated as his 
history. A tragedy in blank verse was written on the subject — 
if our memory does not deceive us, by the hand that now 
chronicles these recollections — in which his father figured as a 
Pirate, and was shot for a voluminous catalogue of atrocities : 
first imparting to his wife the secret of the cave in which his 
wealth was stored, and from which his only son’s half-crowns 
now issued. Dumbledon (the boy’s name) was represented as 
“ yet unborn ” when his brave father met his fate ; and the 
despair and grief of Mrs. Dumbledon at that calamity was 
movingly shadowed forth as having weakened the parlour- 
boarder’s mind. This production was received with great 
favor, and was twice performed with closed doors in the 
dining-room. But, it got wind, and was seized as libel- 
lous, and brought the unlucky poet into severe affliction. 
Some two years afterwards, all of a sudden one day, Dumbledon 
vanished. It was whispered that the Chief himself had taken 
him down to the Docks, and re-shipped him for the Spanish 
M ain ; but nothing certain was ever known about his disap- 
pearance. At this hour, we cannot thoroughly disconnect him 
from California. 

Our School was rather famous for mysterious pupils. There 
was another — a heavy young man, with a large double-cased 


462 


OUR SCHOOL. 


silver watch, and a fat knife the handle of which was a perfect 
tool-box — who unaccountably appeared one day at a special 
desk of his own, erected close to that of the Chief, with whom 
he held familiar converse. He lived in the parlour, and went out 
for walks, and never took the least notice of us — even of us, 
the first boy — unless to give us a depreciatory kick, or grimly 
to take our hat off and throw it away, when he encountered us 
out of doors, which unpleasant ceremony he always performed 
as he passed — not even condescending to stop for the purpose. 
Some of us believed that the classical attainments of this 
phenomenon were terrific, but that his penmanship and arith- 
metic were* defective, and he had come there to mend them ; 
others, that he was going to set up a school, and had paid the 
Chief “ twenty-five pound down,” for leave to see Our School 
at work. The gloomier spirits even said that he was going to 
buy us ; against which contingency, conspiracies were set on 
foot for a general defection and running away. However, he 
never did that. After staying for a quarter, during which 
period, though closely observed, he was never seen to do any- 
thing but make pens out of quills, write small-hand in a secret 
portfolio, and punch the point of the sharpest blade in his knife 
into his desk all over it, he too disappeared, and his place knew 
him no more. 

There was another boy, a fair, meek boy, with a delicate 
complexion and rich curling hair, who, we found out, or thought 
we found out (we have no idea now, and probably had none 
then, on what grounds, but it was confidentially revealed from 
mouth to mouth), was the son of a Viscount who had deserted 
his lovely mother. It was understood that if he had his rights, he 
would be worth twenty thousand a year. And that if his mother 
ever met his father, she would shoot him with a silver pistol, which 
she carried, always loaded to the muzzle, for that ])urpose. He 
was a very suggestive topic. So was a young mulatto, who was 
always believed (though very amiable) to have a dagger about 
him somewhere. But, we think they were both outshone, upon 
the whole, by another boy who claimed to have been born on 
the twenty-ninth of February, and to have only one birthday in 
five years. VVe suspect this to have been a fiction— but he lived 
upon it all the time he was at Our School. 

The principal currency of Our School was slate pencil. It 
had some inexplicable value, that was never ascertained, never 
reduced to a standard. To have a great hoard of it, was some- 
how to be rich. We used to bestow it in charity, and confer it 
us a precious boon upon our chosen friends. When the holi- 


OUR SCHOOL. 


463 


days were coming, contributions were solicited for certain boys 
whose relatives were in India, and who were appealed for under 
the generic name of “ Holiday-stoppers,” — appropriate marks of 
remembrance that should enliven and cheer them in their home- 
less state. Personally, we always contributed these tokens of 
sympathy in the form of slate-pencil, and always felt that it 
would be a comfort and a treasure to them. 

Our School was remarkable for white mice. Red-polls, lin- 
nets, and even canaries, were kept in desks, drawers, hat-boxes, 
and other strange refuges for birds ; but white mice were the 
favourite stock. The boys trained the mice, much better than 
the masters trained the boys. We recall one white mouse, who 
lived in the cover of a I.atin dictionary, who ran up ladders, 
drew Roman chariots, shouldered muskets, turned wheels, and 
even made a very creditable appearance on the stage as the 
Dog of Montargis. He might have achieved greater things, 
bjit for having the misfortune to mistake his way in a triumphal 
procession to the Capitol, when he fell into a deep inkstand, 
and was dyed black and drowned. The mice were the occa- 
sion of some most ingenious engineering, in the construction 
of their houses and instruments of performance. The famous 
one belonged to a Company of proprietors, some of whom 
have since made Railroads, Engines, and Telegraphs; the 
chairman has erected mills and bridges in New Zealand. 

The usher at Our School, who was considered to know every- 
thing as opposed to the Chief, who was considered to know 
nothing, was a bony, gentle-faced, clerical-looking young man 
in rusty black. It was whispered that he was sweet upon one 
of Maxby’s sisters (Maxby lived close by, and was a day pupil), 
and further that he “ favoured Maxby.” As we remember, he 
taught Italian to Maxby’s sisters on half-holidays. He once 
went to the play with them, and wore a white waistcoat and a 
rose : which was considered among us equivalent to a declara- 
tion. We were of opinion on that occasion, that to the last 
moment he expected Maxby’s father to ask him to dinner at 
five o’clock, and therefore neglected his own dinner at half- 
past one, and finally got none. We exaggerated in our imagi- 
nations the extent to which he punished Maxby’s father’s cold 
meat at supper ; and we agreed to believe that he was elevated 
with wine and water when he came home. But, we all liked 
him ; for he had a good knowledge of boys, and v/ould have 
made it a much better school if he had had more power. He 
was writing-master, mathematical master, English master, made 
out the bills, mended the pens, and did all sorts of things. He 


464 


OUR SCHOOL, 


divided the little boys with the I^atin master (they were smuggled 
through their rudimentary books, at odd times when there was 
nothing else to do), and always called at parents’ houses to in- 
quire after sick boys, because he had gentlemanly manners. 
He was rather musical, and on some remote quarter-day had 
bought an old trombone ; but a bit of it was lost, and it made 
the most extraordinary sounds when he sometimes tried to play 
it of an evening. His holidays never began (on account of 
the bills) until long after ours ; but, in the summer vacations 
he used to take pedestrian excursions with a knapsack ; and at 
Christmas-time he went to see his father at Chipping Norton, 
who we all said (on no authority) was a dairy-fed-pork-butcher. 
Poor fellow! He was very low all day on Maxby’s sister’s 
wedding-day, and afterwards was thought to favor Maxby more 
than ever, though he had been ex})ected to spite him. He has 
been dead these twenty years. Poor fellow ! 

Our remembrance of Our School, presents the Latin master 
as a colorless, doubled-up, near-sighted man with a crutch, who 
was always cold, and always putting onions into his ears for 
deafness, and always disclosing ends of flannel under all his 
garments, and almost always apiflying a ball of pocket-handker- 
chief to some part of his face with a screwing action round and 
round. He was a very good scholar, and took great pains 
where he saw intelligence and a desire to learn : otherwise, per- 
haps not. ^ Our memory presents him (unless teased into a 
passion) with as little energy as colour — as having been worried 
and tormented into monotonous feebleness — as having had the 
best part of his life ground out of him in a Mill of boys. We 
remember with terror how he fell asleep one sultry afternoon 
with the little smuggled class before him, and awoke not when 
the footstep of the Chief fell heavy on the floor ; how the Chief 
aroused him, in the midst of a dread silence, and said, “ Mr. 
Blinkins, are you ill, sir?” how he blushingly replied, “Sir, 
rather. so” ; how the Chief retorted with severity, “Mr. Blink- 
ins, this is no place to be ill in ” (which was very, very true), 
and walked back, solemn as the ghost in Hamlet, until, catch- 
ing a wandering eye, he caned that boy for inattention, and 
happily expressed his feelings towards the Latin master through 
the medium of a substitute. 

There was a fat little dancing-master who used to come in a 
gig, and taugnt the more advanced among us hornpipes (as an 
accomplishment in great social demand in after-life) ; and there 
was a brisk little French master who used to come in the 
sunniest weather, with a handleless umbrella, and to whom the 


OUR SCHOOL. 


465 


Chief was always polite, because (as we believed), if the Chief 
offended him, he would instantly address the Chief in French, 
and forever confound him before the boys with his inability to 
understand or reply. 

There was besides, a serving man, whose name was Phil. 
Our retrospective glance presents Phil as a shipwrecked carpen- 
ter, cast away upon the desert island of a school, and carrying 
into practice an ingenious inkling of many trades. He mended 
whatever was broken, and made whatever was wanted. He 
was general glazier, among other things, and mended all the 
broken windows — at the prime cost (a§ was darkly rumoured 
among us) of ninepence, for every square charged three-and- 
six to parents. We had a high opinion of his mechanical 
genius, and generally held that the Chief “knew something 
bad of him,” and on pain of divulgence enforced Phil to be his 
bondsman. We particularly remember that Phil had a sovereign 
contempt for learning : which engenders in us a respect for his 
sagacity, as it implies his accurate observation of the relative 
positions of the Chief and the ushers. He was an impenetrable 
man, who waited at table between whiles, and throughout “ the 
half” kept the boxes in severe custody. He was morose even 
to the Chief, and never smiled, except at breaking-up, when, in 
acknowledgment of the toast, “ Success to Phil ! Hooray ! ” 
he would slowly carve a grin out of his wooden face, where it 
would remain until we were all gone. Nevertheless, one time 
when we had the scarlet fever in the school, Phil nursed all the 
sick boys of his own accord, and was like a mother to them. 

There, was another school not far off, and of course our 
school could have nothing to say to that school. It is mostly 
the way with schools, whether of boys or men. Well ! the 
railway has swallowed up ours, and the locomotives now run 
smoothly over its ashes. 

So fades and languishes, grows dim and dies, 

All that this world is proud of, 

and is not proud of, too. It had little reason to be proud of 

Our School, and has done much better since in that way, and 
will do far better yet. 

20 * 


466 


OUR VESTRY, 


OUR VESTRY. 

E have the glorious privilege of being always in hot 
water if we like. We are a shareholder in a Great 
Parochial British Joint Stock Bank of Balderdash. We 
have a Vestry in our borough, and can vote for a ves- 
tryman — might even a vestryman, mayhap, if we were inspired 

by a lofty and noble ambition. Which we are not. 

Our Vestry is a deliberative assembly of the utmost dignity 
and importance. Like the Senate of ancient Rome, its awful 
gravity overpowers (or ought to overpower) barbarian visitors. 
It sits in the Capitol (we mean in the capital building erected 
for it), chiefly on Saturdays, and shakes the earth to its centre 
with the echoes of its thundering eloquence, in a Sunday paper. 

To get into this Vestry in the eminent capacity of Vestry- 
man, gigantic efforts are made, and Herculean exertions used. 
It is made manifest to the dullest capacity at every election, 
that if we reject Snozzle we are done for, and that if we fail to 
bring in Blunderbooze at the top of the poll, we are unworthy 
of the dearest rights of Britons. Flaming placards are rife on 
all the dead walls in the burough, public-houses hang out ban- 
ners, hackney-cabs burst into full-grown flowers of type, and 
everybody is, or should be, in a paroxysm of anxiety. 

At these momentous crisis of the national fate, we are much 
assisted in our deliberations by two eminent volunteers ; one of 
whom subscribes himself A Fellow Parishioner, the other, A 
Rate-Payer. Who they are, or what they are, or where they 
are, nobody knows ; but, whatever one asserts, the other con- 
tradicts. They are both voluminous writers, inditing more 
epistles than Lord Chesterfield in a single week ; and the 
greater part of their feelings are too big for utterance in any- 
thing less than capital letters. They require the additional aid 
of whole rows of notes of admiration, like balloons, to point 
their generous indignation ; and they sometimes communicate 
a crushing severity to stars. As thus : 

MEN OF MOONEYMOUNT. 

Is it, or is it not, a * * to saddle the parish with a debt of 

fir. gd., yet claim to be a rigid economist ? • 

Is it, or is it not, a * * ^ to state as a fact what is proved to 
be both a moral and a physical impossibility ? 



OUR VESTRY'. 45 ^ 

Is it, or is it not, a * to call ^2,745 6^-. gd. nothing; 
and nothing, something ? 

Do you, or do you no^ want a * * ^ ^ to represent you 
IN THE Vestry? 

Your consideration of these questions is recommended to 
you by 

A Fellow Parishioner. 

It was to this important public document that one of our 
first orators, Mr. Magg (of Little Winkling Street), adverted, 
when he opened the great debate of the fourteenth of Novem- 
ber by saying, “ Sir, I hold in my hand an anonymous slander ” 
— and when the interruption, with which he was at that point 
assailed by the opposite faction, gave rise to that memorable 
discussion on a point of order which will ever be remembered 
with interest by constitutional assemblies. In the animated 
debate to which we refer, no fewer than thirty-seven gentlemen, 
many of them of great eminence, including Mr. Wigsby (of 
Chumbledon Square), were seen upon their legs atone time ; and 
it was on the same great occasion tliat Dogginson — regarded 
in our vestry as “a regular John Bull we believe, in conse- 
quence of his liaving always made up his mind on every sub- 
ject without knowing anything about it — informed another gen- 
tleman of similar principles on the opposite side, that if he 
“cheek’d him,” he would resort to the extreme measure of 
knocking his blessed head off. 

This was a great occasion. But, our Vestry shines habitually. 
In asserting its own pre-eminence, for instance, it is very strong. 
On the least provocation, or on none, it will be clamorous to 
know whether it is to be “ dictated to,”or “ trampled on,” or 
“ridden over rough- shod.” Its great watchword is Self-gov- 
ernment. That is to say, supposing our Vestry to favour any 
little harmless disorder like Typhus Fever, and supposing the 
Government of the country to be, by any accident, in such 
ridiculous hands, as that any of its authorities should consider 
it a duty to object to Typhus Fever — obviously an unconstitu- 
tional objection — then, our Vestry cuts in with a terrible mani- 
festo about Self-government, and claims its independent right to 
have as much Typhus Fever as pleases itself. Some absurd 
and dangerous persons have represented, on the other hand, 
that though our Vestry may be able to “ beat the bounds ” of 
its own parish, it may.not be able to beat the bounds of its own 
diseases; which (say they) spread over the whole land, in an 
ever-expanding circle of waste, and misery, and death, and 


468 


OUR VESTRY. 


Avidovvhood, and orphanage, and desolation. But our Vestry 
makes short work of any such fellows as these. 

It was our Vestry — pink of Vestries as it is — that in support 
of its favourite principle took the celebrated ground of denying 
the existence of the last pestilence that raged in England, when 
the pestilence was raging at the Vestry doors. Dogginson said 
it was plums ; Mr. Wigsby (of Chumbledon Square) said it was 
oysters ; Mr. Magg (of little Winkling Street) said, amid great 
cheering, it was the newspapers. The noble indignation of our 
Vestry with that un-English institution the Board of Health, 
under those circumstances, yields one of the finest passages in 
its history. It wouldn’t hear of rescue. Like Mr. Joseph 
Miller’s Frenchman, it would be drowned and nobody should 
save it. Transported beyond grammar by its kindled ire, it 
spoke in unknown tongues, and vented unintelligible bellowings, 
more like an ancient oracle than the modern oracle it is admitted 
on all hands to be. Rare exigencies produce rare things ; and 
even our Vestry, new hatched to the woful time, came forth a 
greater goose than ever. 

But this, again, was a special occasion. Our Vestry, at more 
ordinary periods, demands its meed of praise. 

Our Vestry is eminently parliamentary. Playing at Parlia- 
. ment is its favourite game. It is even regarded by some of its 
members as a chapel of ease to the House of Commons : a 
Little Go to be passed first. It has its strangers’ gallery, and 
its reported debates (see the Sunday paper before mentioned), 
and our Vestrymen are in and out of order, and on and otf their 
legs, and above all are transcendently quarrelsome, after the 
pattern of the real original. 

Our Vestry being assembled, Mr. Magg never begs to trouble 
Mr. Wigsby with a simple inquiry. He knows better than that. 
Seeing the honourable gentleman, associated in their minds with 
Chumbledon Square, in his place, he wishes to ask that honour- 
able gentleman what the intentions of himself, and those with 
whom he acts, may be, on the subject of the paving of the dis- 
trict known as Piggleum Buildings ? Mr. Wigsby replies (with 
his eye on next Sunday’s paper), that in reference to the question 
, \vhich has been put to him by the honourable gentleman oppo- 
site, he must take leave to say, that if that honourable gentleman 
had had the courtesy to give him notice of that question, he 
(Mr. Wigsby) would have consulted with his colleagues in refer- 
ence to the advisability, in the present state of the discussion's 
on the new paving-rate, of answering that question. But, as the 
honourable gentleman has not had the courtesy to give him 


OUR VESTRY. 


469 


notice of that question (great cheering from the Wigsby interest), 
he must decline to give the honourable gentleman the satisfac- 
tioiiMie requires. Mr. Magg, instantly rising to retort, is received 
with loud cries of “ Spoke ! ” from the Wigsby interest, and with 
cheers from the Magg side of the house. Moreover, live gen- 
tlemen rise to order, and one of them, in revenge for being 
taken no notice of, petrifies the assembly by moving that this 
Vestry do now adjourn; but, is persuaded to withdraw that 
awful proposal, in consideration of its tremendous consequences 
if persevered in. Mr. Magg, for the purpose of being heard, 
then begs to move, that you. Sir, do now pass to the order of 
the day ; and takes that oi)portunity of saying, that if an hon- 
ourable gentleman whom he has in his eye, and will not demean 
himself by more particularly naming (oh, oh, and cheers), sup- 
poses that he is to be jiut down by clamour, that honourable 
gentleman — however supported he may be, through thick and 
thin, by a Fellow Parishioner, with whom he is well acquainted 
(cheers and counter-cheers, Mr. Magg being invariably backed 
by the Rate-Payer) — will find himself mistaken. Upon this, 
twenty members of our Vestry speak in succession concerning 
what the two great men have meant, until it aippears, after an 
hour and twenty minutes, that neither of them meant anything. 
Then our Vestry begins business. 

We have said that, after the pattern of the real original, our 
Vestry in playing at Parliament is transcendently quarrelsome. 
It enjoys a personal altercation above all things. Perhajis the 
most redoubtable case of this kind we have ever had — though 
we have had so many that it is difficult to decide — was that on 
which the last extreme solemnities passed between Mr. Tiddy- 
pot (of Gumtion House) and Captain Banger (of Wilderness 
Walk). 

In an adjourned debate on the question whether water could 
be regarded in the light of a necessary of life ; respecting which 
there were great differences of opinion, and many shades of 
sentiment; Mr. Tiddypot, in a powerful burst of eloquence 
against that hyj^othesis, frequently made use of the expression 
that such and such a rumour had “ reached his ears.” Captain 
Banger, following him, and holding that, for purposes of ablution 
and refreshment, a pint of water per diem was necessary for 
every adult of the lower classes, and half a pint for every child, 
cast ridicule upon his address in a sparkling speech, and con- 
cluded by saying that instead of those rumours having reached 
tlie ears of the honourable gentleman, he rather thought the 
honourable gentleman’s cars must have reached the rumours, in 


470 


OUR VESTRY. 


consequence of their well-known length. Mr. Tidclypot imme- 
diately rose, looked the honourable and gallant gentleman full 
in the face, and left the Vestry. 

The excitement, at this moment painfully intense, was height- 
ened to an acute degree when Captain Banger rose, and also 
left the Vestry. After a few moments of profound silence — one 
of these breathless pauses never to be forgotten — Mr. Chib (of 
Tucket’s Terrace, and the father of the Vestry) rose. He said 
that words and looks had passed in that assembly, replete with 
consequences which every feeling mind must deplore. Time 
])ressed. The sword was drawn, and while he spoke the scab- 
bard might be thrown away. He moved that those honourable 
gentlemen who had left the Vestry be recalled, and required to 
pledge themselves upon their honour that this affair should go 
no farther. Ihe motion being by a general union of parties 
unanimously agreed to (for everybody wanted to have the 
belligerents there, instead of out of sight : which was no fun at 
all), Mr. Alagg was deputed to recover Captain Banger, and 
IMr. Chib himself to go in search of Mr. Tiddypot. The Caj)- 
tain was found in a conspicuous position, surveying the passing 
omnibuses from the top step of the front-door immediately 
adjoining the beadle’s box; Mr. Tiddypot made a desperate 
attempt at resistance, but was overpowered by Mr. Chib (a re- 
markably hale old gentleman of eighty-two), and brought back 
in safety. 

Mr. I'iddypot and the Captain being restored to their places, 
and glaring on each other, were called upon by the chair to 
abaiidon all homicidal intentions, and give the Vestry an assur- 
ance that they did so. Mr. Tiddypot remained profoundly 
silent. 1 he Captain likewise remained profoundly silent, saving 
that he was observed by those around him to fold his arms like 
Napoleon Buonaparte, and to snort in his breathing — actions 
but too expressive of gunpowder. 

The most intense emotion now prevailed. Several members 
clustered in remonstrance round the Captain, and several round 
Mr. Tiddypot ; but, both were obdurate. Mr. Chib then pre- 
sented himself amid tremendous cheering, and said, that not to 
snrink from the discharge of his painful duty, he must now move 
that both honourable gentlemen be taken into custody by the 
beadle, and conveyed to the nearest police-office, there to be 
held to bail. The union of parties still continuing, the motion 
was seconded by Mr. Wigsby— on all usual occasions Mr. 
Chib’s opponent — and- rapturously carried with only one dis- 
sentient voice. This was Dogginson’s, who said from his place 


OUR VESTRY. 


471 

“ Let ’em fight it out with fists ; ” but whose coarse remark 
was received as it merited. 

The beadle now advanced along the floor of the Vestry, and 
beckoned with his cocked hat to both members. Every breath 
was suspended. To say that a pin might have been heard to 
fall, would be feebly to express the all-absorbing interest and 
silence. Suddenly, enthusiastic cheering broke out from every 
side of the Vestry. Captain Banger had risen — being, in fact, 
pulled up by a friend on either side, and poked up by a friend 
behind. 

The Captain said, in a deep determined voice, that he had 
every respect for the Vestry and every respect for that 
chair ; that he also respected the honourable gentleman 
of Gumtion House ; but, that he respected his honour more. 
Hereupon the Captain sat down, leaving the whole Vestry 
much affected. Mr. Tiddypot instantly rose, and was re- 
ceived with the same encouragement. He likewise said 
— and the exquisite art of this orator communicated to the 
observation an air of freshness and novelty — that he too had 
ever respect for that Vestry ; that he too had every respect for 
that chair. That he too respected the honourable and gallant 
gentleman of Wilderness Walk ; but, that he too respected his 
honuor more. “ Hows’ever,” added the distinguished Vestryman, 
“ if the honourable or gallant gentleman’s honour is never more 
doubted and damaged than it is by me, he’s all right.” Captain 
Banger immediately started up again, and said that after those 
observations, involving as they did ample concession to his 
honour without compromising the honour of the honourable 
gentleman, he would be wanting in honour as well as in gener- 
osity, if he did not at once repudiate all intention of wounding 
the honour of the honourable gentleman, or saying anything 
dishonourable to his honourable feelings. These observations 
•were repeatedly interrupted by bursts of cheers. Mr. Tiddypot 
retorted that he well knew the spirit of honour by which the 
honourable and gallant gentleman was so honourably animated, 
and that he accepted an honourable explanation, oftered in a 
way that did him honour ; but, he trusted that the Vestry would 
consider that his (Mr. Tiddvpot’s) honour had imperatively 
demanded of him that painful course which he had felt it due 
to his honour to adopt. The Captain and Mr. Tiddypot then 
touched their hats to one another across the Vestry, a great 
many times, and it is thought that these proceedings (reported 
to the extent of several columns in next Sunday’s paper) will 
bring them in as churchwardens next year. 


472 


OUR BORE. 


All this was' strictly after the pattern of the real original, and 
so are the whole of our Vestry’s proceedings. In all their 
debates, they are laudably imitative of the windy and wordy 
slang of the real original, and of nothing that is better in it 
They have headstrong party animosities, without any reference 
to the merits of questions ; they tack a surprising amount of 
debate to a veiy little business ; they set more store by forms 
than they do by substances : — all very like the real original ! 
It has been doubted in our borough, whether our Vestry is of 
any utility ; but our own conclusion is, that it is of the use to 
the Borough that a diminishing mirror is to a Painter, as enabling 
it to peiceive in a small focus of absurdity all the surface defects 
of the real original. 


OUR BORE. 



T is unnecessary to say that we keep a bore. Every- 
body does. But, the bore whom we have the jileas- 
ure and honour of enumerating among our particular 
^ li lends, IS such a generic bore, and has so many traits 
(as It aj^pears to us) in common with the great bore family that 
we are tempted to make him the subject of the present notes. 
May he be generally accepted ! 

Our bore is admitted on all hands to be a good-hearted man 
He may put fifty people out of temper, but he keeps his own. 
He ineserv« a sickly solid smile upon his face, when other 
faces are ruffled by the |rerfection he has attained in his art and 
has an equable voice which never travels out of one key or 
iises above one pitch. His manner is a manner of tranquil 
Intel est. None of his opinions are startling. Among his deep- 
est-rooted convictions, it may be mentioned that he considers 
tlie ail of England damp, and holds that our lively neighbours 
le always call the French our lively neighbours — hWe the 
advantage of us m that particular. Nevertheless, he is unable 
to forget that John Bull is John Bull all the world over, and that 
Ji-nglaiid with all her faults is England still. 

Our bore has travelled. He could not possibly be a coiii- 

mvel 0 ''■"S He rarelv speaks of his 

travels without introducing, sometimes on his own plan of con- 

E luction, morsels of the language of the county which he 
Iways translates. You cannot name to him any little remote 
town in France, Italy, Germany, or Switzerland but he knows 


OUR BORE, 


473 


it well; stayed there a fortnight under peculiar circumstances. 
And talking of that little place, perhaps you know a statue over 
an old fountain, up a little court, which is the second — no, the 
third — stay — yes, the third turning on the right, after you come 
out of the Post house, going up the hill towards the market ? 
You dottt know that statue ? Nor that fountain ? You sur- 
prise him ! They are not usually seen by travellers (most ex- 
traordinary, he has never yet met with a single traveller who 
knew them, except one German, the most intelligent man he 
ever met in his life !) but he thought that you would have been 
the man to find them out. And then he describes them, in a cir- 
cumstantial lecture half an hour long, generally delivered behind 
a door which is constantly being opened from the other side ; 
and implores you, if you ever revisit that place, now do go and 
look at that statue and fountain ! 

Our bore, in a similar manner, being in Italy, made a dis- 
covery of a dreadful picture, which has been the terror of a 
large portion of the civilised world ever since. We have seen 
the liveliest men paralysed by it, across a broad dining-table. 
He was lounging among the mountains, sir, basking in the mel- 
low influences of the climate, when he came to tma piccola 
chiesa — a little church — or perhaps it would be more correct to 
say una piccolissima cappella — the smallest chapel you can pos- 
sibly imagine — and walked in. There was nobody inside but a 
deco — a blind man — saying his prayer, and a vecchio padre — 
old friar — rattling a money box. But, above the head of that 
friar, and immedtately to the right of the altar as you enter — 
to the right of the altar ? No. To the left of the altar as you 
enter — or say near the centre — there hung a painting (subject, 
Virgin and Child) so divine in its expression, so pure and yet 
so warm and rich in its tone, so fresh in its touch, at once so 
glowing in its colour and so statuesque in its repose, that our 
bore cried out in an ecstasy, “ That’s the finest picture in Italy ! ” 
And so it is, sir. There is no doubt of it. It is astonishing 
that that picture is so little known. Even the painter is uncer- 
tain. He afterwards took Blumb, of the Royal academy (it is 
to be observed that our bore takes none but eminent people to 
see sights, and that none but eminent people take our bore), 
and you never saw a man so affected in your life as Blumb was. 
He cried like a child ! And then our bore begins his descrip- 
tion in detail — for all this is introductory — and strangles his 
hearers with the folds of the purple drapery. 

By an equally fortunate conjunction of accidental circum- 
stances, it happened that when our bore was in Switzerland, he 


474 


OUR BORE, 


discovered a Valley, of that superb character, that Chamouni 
is not to be mentioned in the same breath with it This is liow 
it was, sir. He was travelling on a mule — had been in the 
saddle some days — when, as he and the guide, Pierre Blanquo : 
whom you may know, perhaps ? — our bore is sorry you don’t, 
because he is the only guide deserving of the name — as he and 
Pierre were descending, towards evening, among those ever- 
lasting snows, to the little village of La Croix, our bore ob- 
served a mountain track turning off sharply to the right. At 
first he was uncertain whether it was a track at all, and in fact, 
he said to Pierre, gue c'est done, mon ami?— Whsit is that, 

my friend?” Oii, monsieur? said Pierre— Where sir?” 

La ! there ! ’ said our bore. “ ALonsieur, ce n? est rien de 
tout— sir, it’s nothing at all,” said Pierre. “ Allons ! —Make 
haste. II va neiger — it’s going to snow ! ” But, our bore was 
not to be done in that way, and he firmly replied, “I wish to 
go in that divQCtion—Je veux y aller. lam bent n^onii—Je 
suis determmL En ava7tt I — ^go ahead ! ” In consequence of 
which firmness on our bore’s part, they proceeded, sir, during 
two hours of evening, and three of moonlight (they waited in 
a cavern till the moon was up), along the slenderest track, 
overhanging perpendicularly the most awful gulfs, until they ar- 
rived, by a winding descent, in a valley that possibly, and he 
may .say probably, was never visited by any stranger before. 
AVhat a valley! Mountains piled on mountains, avalanches 
stemmed by pine forests ; waterfalls, chalets, mountain-torrents, 
wooden bridges, every conceivable picture of Swiss scenery ! 
The whole village turned out to receive our bore. The peas- 
ant girls kiss him, the men shook hands with him, one old lady 
of benevolent appearance wept upon his breast. He was 
conducted, in a primitive triumph, to the little inn : where he 
was taken ill next morning, and lay for six weeks, attended by 
the amiable hostess (the same benevolent old lady who had 
wept over night) and her charming daughter, Fanchette. It is 
nothing to say that they were attentive to him. They doted on 
him. They called him in their simple way, V Ange Angtais—ihe 
English Angel. When our bore left the valley, there was not a dry 
^e in the place ;. some of the people attended him for miles. 
He begs and entreats of you as a personal favour, that if you ever 
goto Switzerland again (you have mentioned that your last visit 
was your twenty-third), you will go to the valley, and see Swiss 
scenery for the first time. And if you want really to know the 
pastoral people of Switzerland, and to understand them, men- 
tion, in that valley, our bore’s name ! 


OUR BORE. 


475 


Our bore has a crushing brother in the East, who, somehow 
or other, was admitted to smoke pipes with Mehemet Ali, and 
instantly became an authority on the whole range of Eastern 
matters, from Haroun Alraschid to the present Sultan. He is 
in the habit of expressing mysterious opinions on this wide 
range of subjects, but on questions of foreign policy more par- 
ticularly, to our bore, in letters; and our bore is continually 
-sending bits of these letters to the newspapers (which they 
never insert), and carrying other bits about in his pocket-book. 
It is even whispered that he has been seen at the Foreign 
Office, receiving great consideration from the messengers, and 
having his card promptly borne into the sanctuary of the tem- 
ple. The havoc committed in society by this Eastern brother 
is beyond belief. Our bore is always ready with him. We have 
known our bore to fall upon an intelligent young sojourner in 
the wilderness, in the first sentence of a narrative, and beat all 
confidence out of him with one blow of his brother. He became 
omniscient, as to foreign policy, in the smoking of those pipes 
with Mehemet Ali. The balance of power in Europe, the ma- 
chinations of the Jesuits, the gentle and humanising influence 
of Austria, the position and prospects of that hero of the noble 
soul who is worshipped by happy France, are all easy reading 
to our bore’s brother. And our bore is so provokingly self- 
dening about him ! “ I don’t pretend to more than a very gen- 

eral knowledge of these subjects myself,” says he, after ener- 
vating the intellects of several strong men, “ but these are my 
brother’s opinions, and I believe he is known to be well- 
informed.” 

The commonest incidents and places would appear to have 
been made special, expressly for our bore. Ask him whether 
he ever chanced to walk, between seven and eight in the morn- 
ing, down St. James’s Street, London, and he will tell you, never 
in his life but once. But, it’s curious that that once was in 
eighteen thirty ; and that as our bore was walking down the 
street you have just mentioned, at the hour you have just 
mentioned — half-past-seven — or twenty minutes to eight. No ! 
Let him be correct ! — exactly a quarter before eight by the 
Palace clock — he met a fresh-coloured, grey-haired, good- 
humoured looking gentleman, with a brown umbrella, who, 
as he passed him, touched his hat and said, “ Fine morning, 
sir, fine morning ! ” — William the P'ourth ! 

Ask our bore whethel- he has seen Mr. Barry’s new Houses of 
Parliament, and he will reply that he has not yet inspected them 
minutely, but that you remind him that it was his singular 


476 


OUR BORE. 


fortune to be the last man to see the old Houses of Parliament 
before the fire broke out. It happened in this way. Poor 
John Spine, the celebrated novelist, had taken him over to 
South Lambert^ to read to him the last few chapters of what 
was^ cci tainly his best book — as our bore told him at tjie time, 
adding, “ Now, my dear John, touch it, and you’ll spoil it ! 
and our bore was going back to the club by way of Millbank 
and Parliament Street, when he stopped to think of Cannino-, 
and look at the Houses of Parliament. Now, you know far 
more of the philosophy of Mind than our bore does, and are 
much better able to explain to him than he is to explain to you 
why or wherefore, at that particular time, the thought of fire 
should come into his head. But, it did. It did. He thought, 
v\ hat a national calamity if an edifice connected with so many 
associations should be consumed by fire ! At that time there 
was not a single soul in the street but himself. All was quiet, 
dark, and solitary. After contemplating the building for a min- 
ute— or say a minute and a-half, not more— our bore proceeded 
on his way, mechanically repeating, What a national calamity 
if such an edifice, connected with such associations, should be 

destroyed by A man coming towards him in a violent 

^ate of agitation completed the sentence, Avith the exclamation. 
Fire ! Our bore looked round, and the whole structure was in 
a blaze. 

In harmony and union with these experiences, our bore never 
went anywhere in a steam-boat but he made either the best or 
the worst voyage ever known on that station. Either he over- 
heaid the captain say to himself, with his hands clasped, '‘We 
are all lost ! ” or the captain openly declared to him that he 
had never made such a run before, and never should be able to 
do It again. Our bore was in that express train on that railway 
when they made (unknown to the passengers) the experiment 
of going at the rate of a hundred miles an hour. Our bore 
lemaiked on that occasion to the other people in the carriage 
“ This is too fast, but sit still ! ” He was at that Norwich 
musical festival when the extraordinary echo for which science 
has been wholly unable to account, was heard for the first and 
last time. He and the bishop heard it at the same moment, 
and caught each other’s eye. He was present at the illumina- 
tion of St. Peter’s, of which the Pope is known to have re- 
nwked, as he looked at it out of his window in the Vatican, 

./ Qnesta cosa non sara fatta, mai ancora, corne questa 
, ^Heaven ; this thing will never be done again, like 
tins I He has seen every lion he ever saw, under some re- 


OUR BORE. 


477 


niarkably propitious circumstances. He knows there is no 
fancy in it, because in every case the showman mentioned 
the fact at the time, and congratulated him upon it. 

At one period of his life our bore had an illness. It was an 
illness of a dangerous character for society at large. Innocently 
I remark that you are very well, or that somebody else is very 
well ; and our bore, with a preface that one never knows what a 
blessing health is until one has lost it, is reminded of that illness, 
and drags you through the whole of its symptoms, progress, and 
treatment. Innocently remark that you are not well, or that 
somebody else is not well, and the same inevitable result 
ensues. You will learn how our bore felt a tightness about 
[ here, sir, for which he couldn’t account, accompanied with a 
constant sensation as if he were being stabbed — or rather 
jobbed — that expresses it more correctly — ^jobbed — with-a blunt 
knife. Well, sir ! This went on until sparks began to flirt 
before his eyes, water-wheels to turn round in his head, and 
hammers to beat incessantly thump, thump, thump, all down 
his back — along the whole of the spinal vertebrae. Our bore, 
when his sensations had come to this, thought it a duty he 
owed to himself to take advice, and he said. Now, whom shall 
1 consult ? He naturally thought of Callow, at that time one 
of the most eminent physicians in London, and he went to Cal- 
low. Callow said, “ Liver ! ” and prescribed rhubarb and 
calomel, low diet, and moderate exercise. Our bore went on 
with this treatment, getting worse every day, until he lost con- 
fidence in Callow, and went to Moon, whom half the town was 
then mad about. Moon was interested in the case ; to do him 
justice he was very much interested in the case ; and he said, 
“ Kidneys ! ” He altered the whole treatment, sir — gave 
strong acids, cupped, and blistered. This went on, our bore still 
getting worse every day, until he openly told Moon it would be 
a satisfaction to him if he would have a consultation with Clat- 
ter. The moment Clatter saw our bore, he said, “ Accumula' 
tion of fat about the heart ! ” Snugglewood, who was called in 
with him, differed, and said, “ Brain !”^ But, what they all 
agreed upon was, to lay our bore upon his back, to shave his 
head, to leech him, to administer enormous quantities of med- 
icine, and to keep him low ; so that he was reduced to a mere 
shadow, you wouldn’t have known him, and nobody considered 
it possible that he could ever recover. This was his condition, 
sir, when he heard of Jilkins — at that period in a very small 
practice, and living in the upper part of a house in Great Port- 
land Street ; but still, you understand, with a rising reputation 


478 


OUR BORE. 


amon2[ the few people to whom he was known. Being in that 
condition in which a drowing man catches at a straw, our bore 
sent for Jilkins. Jilkins came. Our bore liked his eye, and 
said, ‘'Mr. Jilkins, I have a presentiment that you will do me 
good.” Jilkins’s reply was characteristic of the man. It was, 
“ Sir, I mean to do you good.” This confirmed our bore’s 
opinion of his eye, and they went into the case together— went 
completely into it. Jilkins then got up, walked across the 
room, came back and sat down. His words were these. “ You 
have been humbugged. This is a case of indigestion, occa- 
sioned by deficiency of power in the Stomach. Take a mutton 
chop in half-an-hour, with a glass of the finest old sherry that 
can be got for money. Take two mutton chops to-morrow, 
and two glasses of the finest old sherry. Next day, I’ll come 
again.” In a week our bore was on his legs, and Jilkins’s suc- 
cess dates from that period ! 

Our bore is great in secret information. He happens to 
know many things that nobody else knows. He can generally 
tell you where the split is in the Ministry \ he knows a deal 
about the Queen ; and has little anecdotes to relate of the royal 
nursery. He gives you the judge’s private opinion of Sludge 
the murderer, and his thoughts when he' tried him. He hap- 
pens to know what such a man got by such a transaction, and 
It was fifteen thousand five hundred pounds, and his income is 
twelve thousand a year. Our bore is also great in mystery. He 
believes, with an exasperating appearance of profound mean- 
ing, that you saw Parkins last Sunday ?— -Yes, you did.— Did 
he say anything particular ?— No, nothing particular.— Our 
bore IS surprised at that.— Why ?— Nothing. Only he under- 
stood that Parkins had come to tell you something. What 

about ?— Well ! our bore is not at liberty to mention what 
about. But, he believes you will hear that from Parkins him- 
self, soon, and he hopes it may not surprise you as it did him. 
Perhaps, however, you never heard about Parkins’s wife’s sis- 
ter ? — No. — Ah ! says our bore, that explains it ! 

Our bore is great in argument. He infinitely enjoys a lono- 
humdrum, drowsy interchange of words of dispute about 
nothing. He considers that it strengthens the mind, conse- 
quently, he “ don t see that,” very often. Or, he would be 
glad to know what you mean by that. Or, he doubts that. Or, 
he has always understood exactly the reverse of that. Or he 
can’^t admit that. Or, he begs to deny that. Or, surely you ' 
don t mean that. ^ And so on. He once advised us ; of- 
fered us a piece of advice, after the fact, totally impracticable 


OUR BORE. 


479 


and wholly impossibly of acceptance, because it supposed the 
fact, then eternally disposed of, to be yet in abeyance. It was 
a dozen years ago, and to this hour our bore benevolently 
wishes, in a mild voice, on certain regular occasions, that we 
had thought better of his opinion. 

The instinct with which our bore finds out another bore, and 
^closes with him, is amazing. We have seen him pick his man 
out of fifty men, in a couple of minutes. They love to go 
(which they do naturally) into a slow argument on a previously 
exhausted subject, and to contradict each other, and to wear 
the hearers out, without impairing their own perennial fresh- 
ness as bores. It improves the good understanding between 
them, and they get together afterwards and bore each other 
amicably. Whenever we see our bore behind a door with an- 
other bore, we know that when he comes forth, he will praise 
the other bore as one of the most intelligent men he ever met. 
And this bringing to the close of what we had to say about our 
bore, we are anxious to have it understood that he never 
bestowed this praise on us. 


THE END. 


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